Nothing Gold Can Stay
by Aeschylus Rex
Summary: "That's a harsh word, isn't it? I don't like the way it sounds on you." Lexa hums and Clarke's arms tighten. "Being crazy is a harsh thing." / Everything has a beginning and an end. When it comes to Clarke, Lexa's afraid to begin.
1. Slice 1

_4.17.16_

 _Why can't I write about healthy relationships? Idk why I'm like this..._

 _Anyway, like everyone else lately, I've had all these feelings about Clarke and Lexa, so, naturally, I decided to write about it. It was just a few drabbles at first, some slice of life stuff, but it's starting to turn into a cohesive, coherent thing so I'm posting them here in regular installments._

 _Oh, and also, I got a tumblr account (finally) so I can interact with my readers a little more. I may be a luddite and a total tumblr n00b, but I'll do my best to respond to any questions, requests, or comments. Find me at aeschylusrex_

 _Thanks!_  
 _-Rex_

* * *

 _Nature's first green is gold,  
Her hardest hue to hold.  
Her early leaf's a flower;  
But only so an hour.  
Then leaf subsides to leaf.  
So Eden sank to grief,  
So dawn goes down to day.  
Nothing gold can stay._

 _-Robert Frost_

 **1.**

Clarke Griffin makes Lexa come on a rainy Sunday afternoon in the middle of February, and it ruins everything. There's no time to gather her defenses. There's no time to prepare. It's a storm with no warning. Lexa scarcely realizes how close she is to the edge until she's dangling off it, fingers slipping, scrabbling for holds, closing on air as she falls, tumbling into the enveloping white light below.

It's a lot to take in all at once, frankly.

Panic knocks her head over feet like a tidal wave, shaking her bones, and all Lexa knows is that she has to run. She has to get away. She stumbles out of bed, naked and heaving, tripping over the twisted white sheet between her legs. The polished hardwood leaves floor burns on her knees, drawing sharp curses from her swollen lips between heaving breaths, reminding her of all the years on the basketball team when her aggressive, defensive style of play landed her face down on the court. She recovers gracelessly, legs wobbling like a newborn calf, and Clarke sits up silently in bed, watching with narrowed eyes as she embarks on a treasure hunt through the room, gathering up articles of clothing like they're Hansel and Gretel's trail of breadcrumbs leading right out the bedroom door.

The living room feels ten degrees colder, especially as the sweat cools on her skin. Lexa's shirt sticks in uncomfortable places, and she doesn't get her bra fastened quite right. The prongs dig into her back as she shimmies into her skinny jeans and combat boots. She makes an executive decision to leave her elusive pair of socks behind, shucked and forgotten somewhere in Clarke's room. It would take far too long to find them, far too long fumbling about under Clarke's accusatory gaze. She has more at home, anyway, and it's time to go.

She'll have to take an Uber or the bus, since the weather's too awful to walk to the train. Lexa wriggles her toes and heels into her clammy boots doesn't bother knotting her laces. She stuffs them under the flaps, plotting a route to the nearest bus stop in her head. An aftershock rips through her and she has to grip the back of the couch for a full five seconds before she can move on, stumbling slightly, still off-kilter as she moves on.

"Fuck." Lexa pats herself down as she goes to leave and finds her wallet missing. Or wait, wasn't it in her coat? Where is her coat?

"It's on the radiator." Clarke's raspy voice shatters her quiet panic, and Lexa jumps, hand flying over her heart.

"Clarke."

"Your jacket. It's on the radiator." Clarke pulls the loose sheet tighter across her chest, until two stiff nipples can be seen poking through. "That's what you're looking for, isn't it?"

"Yes. Right." Lexa tears her lingering eyes away. "Thanks."

She turns robotically and strides over to the large window on the opposite side of the room, seeking out the abandoned article. It's still damp, not yet dry from their disastrous picnic in the rose garden, and her lips droop into a frustrated pout. She'll have to walk home in the deluge with wet, sticky clothes. As if on cue, the wind drives a sharp volley of raindrops into the windowpane next to her face.

"Did I do something wrong?" Clarke crosses her arms defensively over her chest and her voice sounds like smoke and burnt molasses, a sweet bite with a bitter finish. "...Are you at least going to tell me why you're leaving?"

Lexa doesn't turn. She reaches up to feel the pulse in her neck, a habit formed in school, when the attacks were worse. She's been on top of it since college, since coming out, but the inclination remains. She slides her fingertips along her jugular until she finds the beat and counts.

" _Hello_. Earth to Lexa."

"I'm thinking," Lexa snaps, or tries to snap. She doesn't really have the energy to snap. Her words are thick like the mixture of mucus and bile creeping up the back of her throat.

She tries to swallow it down, but it hurts.

"Wow." Clarke's answering chuckle is harsh. "You have to think about why you're hitting-and-quitting me?"

Lexa hangs her head.

"Well, then, I don't think I want to hear this." Clarke turns away and shuffles into the bathroom, calling out over her shoulder. "The front lock is broken! Make sure the door clicks when you leave!"

The bathroom door closes softly behind her, and through the wall, Lexa hears the old shower sputter to life.

She decides to take an Uber home.

. . .

It's almost dark as she leaves Clarke's building. The air is cold and damp, and she hugs herself tighter to ward off the chill, but she can breathe out here. Already, her heartbeat is slowing. Her head is clearing up.

Around the corner, near the new tea bar, Lexa spies a lanky blonde kid in ripped clothes sitting under the awning of a dirty tent. His Chucks are soaked and his eyes are glazed. He drags from a stubby cigarette and scratches at the stubble on his hollowed face. He has to be a new one because she hasn't seen him around before. She remembers them all.

Her boots scuff against the sidewalk, heralding her approach, but he just casts his gaze down.

"Spare some change?"

Lexa purses her lips. "Why? So you can shoot it?"

His eyes flick up and pin her, and Lexa stuffs her hands into her pockets, waiting for him to make the next move. He doesn't hesitate.

"Fuck you, lady."

"Yeah, no thanks."

"Come over here to judge me?"

Lexa shrugs and peers up into the sky, blinking away the raindrops. "No."

He shifts and tosses his cigarette butt into the gutter. A young couple passes them on the sidewalk with a covered stroller and sympathetic glances. Does she look so terrible? Do they think she's one, too? So much has changed. So much hasn't changed at all.

The kid in the tent waits until they're halfway down the block, then fixes Lexa with a scowl. "You tryna sell me Jesus?"

"No."

"Well, what the fuck d'you want, lady?"

"Lexa."

He scrunches his nose. "What?"

"My name's Lexa."

"I don't really fuckin' care. You're blockin' my view."

Lexa bows her head, scraping the sidewalk with the toe of her boot. "Where's home?"

He spreads his arms, and a bit of greasy hair flops over his forehead. "You're lookin' at it."

"Some home."

"Yeah, well, fuck you. Get outta my face."

She hums and nods. "Who kicked you out?"

The boy pauses, sucks a chapped lip between his teeth, and glowers. A sharp wind buffets them both, rocking the side of the tent. Lexa grimaces. Night is falling and it's only getting colder.

"My aunt," he says, finally, grudgingly.

He reaches back into his tent and emerges with a red pack of Pall Mall cigarettes. The sides are bent and the front is crushed, but the plastic is still there, shining dully in the orange streetlight. He stuffs a white cylinder in his mouth and fumbles around through piles of dingy blankets and clothing for a lighter. The one he finds is reluctant to light. He has to flick it several times, even scrubbing it furiously against the front of his stained jacket to dry excess moisture. Lexa looks around at the driving rain with despair and decides that it's mostly futile. She fishes a pack of dry matches from her bag and offers it to him.

"I'm sorry. That sucks."

He accepts the matches warily, watching her all the way, waiting for the catch, the flash of a Bible emerging from her pocket, the glint of a knife tugged from her belt.

"Thanks."

"Sure."

"It's Aden."

"Nice to meet you."

He nods and offers her the pack of Pall Malls, which she accepts without question. It's been some years since she really kept up the habit, but he's looking at her now like a kicked dog, and if she can gain his trust this way, she will.

She takes a match and lights it. The cigarette catches immediately and she breathes in, resisting the urge to choke. It's like riding a bike. She'll keep telling herself that. Her healed lungs still feel virginal, but they smoke in silence together for a full minute. Lexa studies an old bar across the street with a neon red and white Trailblazers sign hanging in the window. The thick, wooden door swings open and lets a couple of skinny hipsters in flannel and glasses out into the rain. They round the corner, out of sight. Lexa flicks the ash off her cigarette.

"So, why'd she kick you out?"

"My aunt?" Aden shrugs. "'Cause she's a bitch."

"Clearly."

"Her new boyfriend didn't like me."

Lexa snorts. "Oh, well, that seems like a perfectly valid reason."

Aden picks up on her sarcasm, but he scowls anyway, scoffing around his cigarette as he takes another ambitious drag. "Yeah, fuck her."

"Quite."

He holds out his pinkie and smirks at her, cigarette aloft, and Lexa rolls her eyes. Clarke has a fatal weakness for _Downton Abbey_ and it's already rubbing off on her.

"So, what're you doing out here talkin' to a winner like me? The weather's fuckin' shit."

"Yeah." Lexa watches an ancient Cadillac roll past with a squeaky axel and mismatched wheels. "I'm a winner today, too."

"What'd you fuck up?"

"A girl."

"You a lesbo?"

Lexa snorts, eyes trained on the street. "Fuck off."

Aden laughs and coughs into his fist. There are dark crescents of dirt under his fingernails, and he has swollen knuckles on his right hand. Lexa guesses, without asking, what it's like to try and defend his turf in the city. He bounces his heels on the pavement, eyes fixed somewhere low and away.

"What'd you do?"

Lexa clears her throat and starts to speak, but the words catch. She clears her throat again.

"I ran away."

Aden cocks his head to one side and looks up at her, cigarette dangling loosely between two fingers. "Why?"

"I'm...not sure."

"She like you?"

"Yeah. Maybe not anymore, though."

Aden shakes his head. "Idiot."

"She's really smart, actually."

"Not her. _You_."

"Me?"

"Yeah. Girls don't work like that."

Lexa crosses her arms. "I'm not taking girl advice from a homeless 17 year old."

"Hey, fuck you!" Aden squawks. "This tent sees plenty of action!"

"Sure."

"Look, she's prolly just upset, but she still likes you, even if she tries to play like she doesn't." Aden leans back on one hand. "She does. She prolly just hates herself a little bit for likin' a fuckin' jerk like you."

Lexa quirks a brow. "You know this from personal _tent_ experience?"

"Piss off." His grin is lopsided. "Only God can judge me."

"God, huh?"

"Yeah." Aden snickers and stamps out his cigarette on the bottom of his shoe. "I don't need your waspy suburban bitch ass throwin' shade at me."

A flash of red catches Lexa's eye on the street, the Uber car she ordered just a block down, waiting at the light. She sighs, flicks the cigarette away, and reaches into her pocket. Aden watches curiously as she pulls out her wallet and flips it open, peeling out a fresh five dollar bill.

"Right, well, good talk." She smirks. "I have to go. Promise you won't spend this on meth?"

Aden rolls his eyes. "Whatever you wanna hear."

Lexa hands over the money. "My parents died when I was eleven and I ended up in the system. My aunt wouldn't take me in because I was 'a little faggot'."

Aden's fingers clasp the bill, but he freezes, staring at her. His mouth opens and closes. Behind her, the light turns green. Lexa releases the money into his care and stows her wallet away.

"Don't do drugs." Lexa casts a grim smile over her shoulder. "There are things worse than death."

He blinks, gives a slight shake of his head, and tries to recover his teflon exterior. "Yeah, well… Maybe I don't care."

"Don't say shit you don't mean. See you around, Aden."

Lexa flags down the car and leaves Aden on the sidewalk in his dirty tent, pondering over the five dollar bill in his hands. The rain eases up as night falls and he packs his things.

He spends the money on a sandwich and a new lighter at the 711.

. . .

The drapes are too thin and they don't quite block out the sun. Lexa lies in bed, naked and sweating, listening to the birds in the garden. The traffic has died down again now that school is in session and rush hour is over, but it'll pick up again for lunch. A delivery truck roars by on a creaking frame, squealing as the driver brakes for a turn. It makes her ears ache and her head pound, but she's too tired to do anything about it. She's already rubbed the moisture out of her bloodshot eyes.

The sunlight bends steadily across her bedroom wall, and she watches it and waits for a change.

She's still waiting when the sun glows orange and fades.

She's still waiting when the sun comes up again.

. . .

Lexa can't eat or sleep. She paces her apartment in nothing but socks and a ratty old t-shirt, throwing up bile every few hours. Nothing sits right. The whiskey comes right back up. The vodka hits her even worse. She skips work and talks to herself, running her fingers through her tangled brown hair while the tabby cat winds between her legs, mewling for attention.

She knows what it looks like from the outside. Her foster parents weren't shy about telling her, and neither were the shrinks, scribbling down her symptoms like they scribbled down her life, one bullet point at a time. But it's okay, her therapist assures her, smiling every week in his tiny, beige office, legs crossed in his brown leather chair. It's okay because everybody falls apart sometimes.

She just falls apart a little more.

On Wednesday afternoon, Clarke opens the door to her highrise apartment with a scowl, though her expression softens slightly when she takes in Lexa's general state.

"You look like shit," she says in her dry, heavenly voice.

Clarke's blonde hair is braided, draped like a golden vine around the side of her pale neck. It's frayed and frizzing a bit from the humidity, but Lexa thinks it looks like art. Her gut twists. She wants to take pictures and frame them and put them up all over her walls. She wants to light candles and memorize the way the soft glow changes Clarke's striking features. If the scene in her imagination reminds her too much of an actual altar, she's not thinking about that. She's just thinking about Clarke. Always Clarke.

Lexa slips in through the crack in the front door before the blonde can change her mind and strides over to the radiator straightaway. Her coat comes off first, followed by her boots, hat, gloves, and scarf. She's dripping onto the floor and chilled to the bone. Her teeth are chattering so hard that her jaw is sore from clenching them, trying to hide her weakness to the wet Portland winters. She knows, unfortunately, that her body won't warm up again until she holds down some food.

"Staying for a while?" Clarke's arms are folded. Her pretty eyes are grey.

Lexa throws all of her sodden items over the hot, iron grate, and turns, reluctantly, to face the girl who has haunted her thoughts for every minute of every hour since the previous Sunday afternoon.

"If that's alright?"

Clarke's eyes flicker, but Lexa can't read them. Clarke is hard to read when she's truly upset.

"I don't know," she grits out.

"...You don't know if it's alright?"

Clarke sighs and pads away toward the open kitchen, rumpled and beautiful in a simple flannel shirt and leggings, lumpy wool socks bunched up over her ankles. "You heard me."

Lexa balls her shivering hands into fists and stuffs them into the pockets of her oversized sweatshirt. Her heart is racing again, but, really, it's been racing since she left the first time, and her stomach is upset again, too, soured by hours and hours of mental agony. She hasn't slept in days. Her eyes are dry and aching in their sockets. Her limbs feel like rusting mechanical parts on the verge of falling off, gradually becoming more unhinged as their nuts and bolts loosen.

She's a wreck, and Clarke has ruined everything.

"I wanted to explain."

Clarke grabs a kettle from the cupboard and fills it with water. "So explain."

Lexa shifts her weight. "I was scared," she begins, uncertainly.

Clarke's hands pause over a box of black tea. Her throat bobs as she rips two packets out and places the kettle on the stove.

"Scared of what?"

Lexa swallows and looks up at the ceiling, searching for strength. "...I don't date."

"You don't date."

"No." Lexa bites her lips and shuffles on the spot. "Not really."

Clarke starts the burner with a click and rounds the counter, fingertips dragging along the tile. There's a darkness in her gaze that is horribly familiar. Her shoulders are squared the way they always are when she's bracing for a fight. She advances on Lexa like an angry mountain lion and Lexa takes an unsteadied step backward. Her hands find the ledge. Her back bounces against the frigid windowpane.

"Aren't _we_ dating, Lexa? Isn't that what we're doing?" Clarke leans into her space, eyes narrowed. "Because what do you call this if it isn't dating?"

Tears prick the corners of Lexa's eyes and her chin quivers. She's surprised. With all the moisture spilled onto her pillows and her sleeves, she hadn't thought there was anything left to wring out. Clarke continues to surprise her.

"Just...hanging out."

"Liar."

"I'm not a liar, Clarke."

"Don't _Clarke_ me. You're completely full of shit, _Lexa_. You know exactly what this is."

"I don't-"

"Goddamnit!" Clarke throws up her hands in exasperation. "If it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it's dating!"

"But you just showed up out of nowhere!" Lexa counters, growing louder in her agitation. "I didn't plan for you! I wasn't ready!"

"You can't plan life!"

"Yes I can! I do it all the time!"

Clarke huffs and presses closer, pressing her advantage. Lexa's throat bobs. She's already backed up as far as she can. To say this moment is a visual metaphor for how her relationship with Clarke has gone so far would be an understatement.

"So- what? I show up in your life all _deus ex machina_ and now you're freaking out because you didn't build a contingency plan for dating me into your organizational spreadsheet?"

"Yes!" Lexa cries. "Exactly! You just showed up out of nowhere and blew the doors off! You ruined everything! It's not okay, Clarke! I wasn't ready!" A hot tear tracks down Lexa's cheeks and she swipes at it angrily. "It's not…" She takes a shuddering breath. "...I'm not prepared."

Clarke's eyes flick to Lexa's lips. "Blew the doors off," she murmurs, gaze wandering.

"Yeah."

"What do you mean?"

"It's just- I've never-" Lexa shivers and tucks her hair behind her ear, eyes slipping shut. She knows what she's going to say, and already she wants the words back, but it doesn't matter, Clarke is a magnet and Lexa's heart is made of iron. "...I've never come before. Like that. With anyone, or at all, actually. I don't really let people...do _that_...to me."

"Wait, that's what this is about? You've never…?" Clarke trails off, gaze wide.

Lexa turns her head. "Never."

"But we're _27_."

Lexa grits her teeth and fights the overwhelming urge to roll her eyes. "Time flies."

"But not even once? Not even a little one?"

"Clarke-"

"-Sorry, sorry."

The blonde backs away a bit, frowning to herself in thought. "Didn't it feel good? Orgasms are supposed to feel good, right?" Clarke looks up and freezes when she finds a sudden torrent of tears on Lexa's face, pouring from both eyes. "Oh, babe."

Lexa wipes them roughly on her sleeve, and now Clarke can see the slight irritation on her cheeks where the same fabric has chafed many times before.

"Babe, look at me."

Lexa shakes her head emphatically, because there is no way. There is absolutely no way she's going to let Clarke look at her when she's falling apart like this. Her eyes are windows. That's what Anya always said, and it's true. It's so, so true, now more than ever. Her eyes are windows and her soul is pouring out like a flood. Clarke can't look at her like this. Clarke can't see the truth, because if she does it'll drown them both, and Lexa absolutely couldn't live with that.

If her obsession ruins them she won't survive it.

"Babe."

"Don't look at me!"

"Lexa."

"Clarke, stop! Don't look at me!"

Lexa grabs her biceps and tries to push away, but Clarke surges forward, trapping her lips in a bruising, molten kiss. It's like the strings holding her up have been cut. Lexa collapses against her, groaning somewhere deep in her chest. Clarke's mouth feels like silk and fire. She tastes like astringent black tea and honey. It's a fitting flavor for her, Lexa decides, because everything about Clarke, from beginning to end, has been a little bittersweet. Clarke's tongue teases Lexa's lips, tracing and flicking, entertaining ideas that make Lexa's knees weak.

Clarke pulls away and Lexa shudders.

"How did you even get here in the snow?" She presses their foreheads together and fusses with Lexa's hair.

"I walked."

"You're kidding."

"I never kid."

Clarke snorts, but her smile grows and grows until she's brighter than the sun and Lexa has to drop her gaze.

The kettle on the stove begins to whistle, but Clarke ignores it, electing, instead, to tug off Lexa's dirty, black sweatshirt.

"When's the last time you changed your clothes?" She asks, clucking her tongue. Lexa's shirt and bra hit the floor next. "And when's the last time you showered?" Lexa doesn't answer, doesn't feel the need to answer, just hums under her breath when Clarke kisses her on the cheek. "I bet you haven't eaten either 'cause you're a massive drama queen."

Lexa smiles and leans forward to kiss Clarke properly, bare chest pressed flush against Clarke's soft flannel, biting down into wet, pliant flesh until they're both dazed and breathing hard. Needy fingers wind into Lexa's greasy hair and pull, and she can't help her reaction. Her hips roll and her mouth falls open, and Clarke is quick to fill the space with her tongue.

"What- do you- do to me?" Clarke murmurs between kisses. "God."

Lexa moans as Clarke's tongue skates along the roof of her mouth. "Fuck."

"You smell like ass, but-" Clarke grips Lexa's shoulders and shoves them back against the window, rattling the glass. "God, I just can't-" She dips down to Lexa's neck and licks a path up her jugular, from her collarbone to her ear. "Jesus, I just want you more."

" _Fuck_ ," Lexa says again. Her vocabulary has been severely reduced.

Clarke bites her earlobe and nuzzles into Lexa's dark, wavy hair, breathing deep. "Christ, I think I _like it_ when you smell like this."

Nimble fingers tug at Lexa's belt buckle and she gasps as the seam of her pants presses up between her legs. Is she wet? Already? The stickiness is too distinct to miss, but really, when did that happen? So fast. Always with Clarke. Always so fast. Clarke watches her breathless, blissed out expression with rapt attention, a cheshire cat grin slinking across her hungry face, and it leaves Lexa absolutely winded. The belt clicks as it comes undone, as Lexa comes undone, as her pants, and her resolve, pool on the hardwood floor.

Clarke ducks down to suck a stiff nipple into her scalding mouth, rolling it deftly with her magic tongue, and Lexa's hands fly to Clarke's neck, pulling her closer even as her knees tremble. Her back arches and her lungs catch, and then she's crying out, in chorus with the kettle, still whistling from it's forgotten place on the kitchen stove. The window is so cold, and Clarke's mouth is so hot. Lexa is so dizzy. When Clarke switches sides, when Lexa's knees finally give out, Lexa isn't surprised at all. It's the new normal, one where she never lasts long. Clarke goes down with her like a captain with her ship, cradling Lexa's body in her arms, lowering her the rest of the way to the ground. Lexa's back sticks and catches against the cold hardwood and she gasps out, bending up instinctively into Clarke's warmth.

"I've got you," Clarke murmurs against her mouth, biting Lexa's lip, tugging possessively. Soft hands caress Lexa's face, slide into her hair. "I've got you, you dork." Clarke kisses her again. "I can't believe you walked all the way here." Clarke sucks a mark into Lexa's clavicle. "I can't believe you didn't just wait out the snow."

Lexa wraps her legs around Clarke's middle and rocks gently. "I wanted to get stuck here with you." Her head falls back against the floor as Clarke thrusts with her hips. "Fucking- God, _fuck_!"

Clarke smirks. "I plan to."

"Are you gonna take off that shirt?" Teeth close around Lexa's nipple, tugging roughly. "Jesus!"

"Are you gonna ask nicely?"

Lexa groans, eyes fluttering, gazing into the void. Clarke is stripping off her underwear. Clarke's fingers are spreading her open. Clarke's hands are covered with her. Lexa moans. She sounds so weak. It's so embarrassing. She just can't help herself.

"I'm dirty," she pleads.

"I know," Clarke purrs, licking up Lexa's ribs. "I like it."

"You're mad at me," she pleads again, breath hitching as Clarke presses down on her clit with two strong fingers.

"Furious," Clarke agrees.

She circles and slides and pinches and Lexa writhes, hands fisting uselessly in the back of Clarke's shirt. Her legs are shaking. Her heart is racing. Her nerve ends are burning like the hottest wild fire in the west, and each stroke from Clarke's deft fingers sends a jolt of lightning up her back and down her legs, straight to the pulsing mess in her core. God, she's such a mess. Clarke always makes such a mess of her. Clarke always. Always Clarke.

"God!" she screams. "Jesus god!"

"Eyes on me, babe." Clarke's grin is positively feral. She thrusts two fingers in deep, up to the second knuckle, and twists. "Who's fucking you right now?"

It's the straw that breaks the camel's back.

Lexa's eyes fly open.

"Clarke! Fuck, _Clarke_! Jesus fucking christ!"

Lexa's eyes are wide open, but she can't see. She hears a husky laugh below her ear and nearly screams out again.

"Leave him out of this, please."

Clarke begins to thrust in earnest, and Lexa's hips are thrusting with her, canting up to meet every stroke like she's gagging for it, like she's starving for it. Because maybe she is. Maybe she _is_ starving for it. Lexa tugs Clarke's shirt so hard that a button pops, skittering across the floor, clicking against the wood as it settles. Her ears are full of cotton. Her head is full of static. Clarke's hands are made of heroin and fire, and Lexa's body is moving on its own, like a marionette on strings, like Clarke's the puppeteer, tugging, pulling, and directing. It's everything she was afraid of. It's everything she feared it was. Who is she anymore? Who is this person that screams and begs for Clarke? Who's in control? Because it's not Lexa. It hasn't been Lexa for weeks. She's on a crash course with ruin and she isn't in the driver's seat.

Her muscles all seize at once, and for the second time in four days, Lexa loses control.

She comes with a sob in Clarke's arms, wrecked, ravaged, shaking as the blonde collapses on top of her, whispering quiet assurances into her neck. Lexa clutches at Clarke's back with weak hands and lets herself cry. There's nothing else to do. Clarke smells so good and the weight of her body feels so right. She relents. She lets go. They ride out her aftershocks together.

This time, when she comes back down, she's too exhausted to leave.

. . .

Eventually, Clarke gets up to pull the kettle off the stove, when they're both tired enough that the buzz of sexual energy evaporates and the keening whistle fades back into their consciousness. By now, Lexa's body is sticky and cold, utterly fatigued, and she notices, without the heavy blanket of nerves on her senses, that Clarke isn't fairing much better. Her hair and makeup are on point, but there are circles under her eyes. She moves slowly and carefully through the apartment. Her sighs are a bit too labored.

The blonde dips two sachets of Twinnings black tea into two white mugs and carries them over to the coffee table, nudging a pair of coasters into position before setting them down. Lexa reaches for her dirty clothes, but Clarke pads over and swats them away. Her thick flannel shirt falls around Lexa's bare shoulders.

"I'm sticking those in the wash."

"You don't have to do that," Lexa murmurs, but Clarke just wrinkles her nose.

"I kinda do."

"Okay… Thanks."

Clarke helps her to her feet and points to the couch. "Sit," she says. "Drink your tea. I'll be right back."

Lexa does as she's told, because she's really too tired to think about much of anything else, naked and curled up in Clarke's shirt at the end of Clarke's couch. She drains half her tea before her eyes begin to droop. There's a dark place inside her and it's beckoning, tugging her down into the quiet abyss. She's falling before she realizes it. She wants so badly to go there. Sleep is a luxury that she never takes for granted. There were so many years without it. There were so many sleepless nights in strange beds. Lexa takes nothing for granted anymore, least of all the affection of the people close to her.

Nothing is guaranteed.

Soft hands pull the mug from her grasp. Fingers stroke the hair from her face.

"Not yet," Clarke murmurs. "It's four in the afternoon."

Lexa blinks awake. "Oh, sorry."

"Soon," Clarke promises, kissing Lexa gently on the mouth, "but there are things we need to take care of first."

"Oh!" Lexa's eyes widen. "You- I didn't even- shit! I'm sorry-"

Clarke rolls her eyes and kisses away Lexa's panic. "Shhh. That's not what I mean. You need a shower. And food. In that order."

Lexa isn't sure she can stand on her own, let alone shower, but Clarke leads her into the bathroom and pulls off the rest of their clothes, confident with the lead, comfortable with control. She tests the water temperature and sets out cleans towels, and Lexa admires in Clarke the domestic instincts that she, herself, has always lacked. Clarke is someone to be counted on, and Lexa can't be counted on to even remember the days of the week.

"Come on," Clarke says, guiding her by the elbow.

Lexa slips as she gets in, knees wobbling precariously, but Clarke's arms tighten around her waist. Clarke tugs Lexa's body back against her chest, and holds them like that for an indeterminable amount of time, lets the water soak them both, lets it rinse away the grime, the chill, the acrimony, the sheer exhaustion of the past few days. It's nice.

Eventually, Clarke sets about washing both their hair, massaging a gratuitous helping of fancy, organic shampoo into Lexa's scalp. Lexa wants to close her eyes and drift away, let Clarke work out the tension and the grief and the little knots of anxiety that have gone to seed in her muscles. Clarke's fingers slip up behind her ears, brushing tender skin, and Lexa sighs out her pleasure. She's so whipped. It's uncanny how she yields, how she _wants_ to yield. How it reminds her of her early years in the Klickitat house, which she rarely thinks of anymore. The bathroom had been cramped, and the tub had been green porcelain, a color that still draws Lexa's eye, clinging to old lamps and dishware in Portland's consignment stores. That pale hue speaks of an era lost, of things that can be remembered, but not recovered, and for Lexa, it speaks of her mother, who washed her hair hundreds of times in that green tub, taking great care to comb out the knots in Lexa's dark curls. Now, it's Clarke, all these years later, touching her in that familiar way, and Lexa feels that maybe something of that lost era _has_ been recovered, if only for a moment.

Lexa blinks back to the present as Clarke finishes lathering, pushing her further under the spray to rinse. It's still uncanny how Clarke brings these things out of her, these forgotten memories and their companion feelings.

"I have to tell you something," Lexa says.

The hot water feels so good against her sore muscles. It's a spell she's reluctant to break. But Clarke isn't careless like some of the others. Clarke listens with rapt attention to everything Lexa says, and really, it's the greatest comfort she's ever received, because she doesn't bother to talk much. Every word, every phrase, is so carefully chosen, and Clarke isn't careless.

"Tell me," Clarke replies, wet lips brushing against Lexa's wet shoulder.

Lexa leans into her touch. "I was on meds for a long time. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and beta-blockers and benzodiazepines." Her eyes slip closed. She's so tired. "They suppressed my sex drive, and my ability to...finish."

Clarke is silent for a long moment. "When did you go off them?"

"Six months ago."

"Why?"

"I was stable, finally." Lexa smiles ruefully. "For a minute."

"Stable?"

She hears the edge of concern in Clarke's voice, and her tone grows wistful. "For a minute."

. . .

Clarke's hands swim through the sheets and find Lexa. The room is pitch black and the world is quiet, muffled by a layer of new snow. Clarke's arms circle her waist and tug until their skin is flush. Lexa's never felt so warm.

"I don't really know what that all means," Clarke confesses.

Her lips brush nape of Lexa's neck and leave goosebumps there, indelible even as they fade, tiny needles soaking into her spine. Clarke smells of apricot, honey, and mint. Nothing will ever be the same.

"It means I'm crazy sometimes."

"That's a harsh word, isn't it? I don't like the way it sounds on you."

Lexa hums and Clarke's arms tighten. "Being crazy is a harsh thing."

Clarke's breath catches, and Lexa reaches back to soothe with her fingers, whatever she can find and hold. Whatever she can keep.

"It's okay, Clarke. I'm not made of glass."

"I think you are, though. Sometimes." Clarke pulls on her waist until she rolls, their legs breaking apart and re-tangling, bringing them face to face in the dark. "Are you here now?"

"Yeah." Lexa kisses her.

Clarke nudges their noses together. "What do I do when you're not?"

Lexa breathes in and kisses Clarke again, lets their lips linger together when she speaks. "Please just love me me anyway."

* * *

 _Thanks for reading! What did you think? :)_

 _on tumblr and AO3 at aeschylusrex_


	2. Slice 2

_4.22.16_

 _Okay, rant! alert:_

 _I am still perplexed by the writing decisions on The 1OO this season. How do you target a show towards an audience of teenage girls, and then decide that it's a fabulous idea to kill Lexa with a stray bullet, execute Octavia's bae, torture Raven (who is already crippled, I might add jfc), and let the entire cast drag a tormented, over-apologetic Clarke through the mud over and over again for saving their lives? What's the message here? That strong women get put down? That strong women suffer for being strong? That men like Bellamy get to screw up over and over again and still get redemption arcs while Clarke limps through the end of the season carrying her murdered-lover's brain chip in her pocket? And like, speaking of Bellini, were we supposed to believe that Murphy was the twisted one? Because from where I'm standing, Bellamy looks a lot worse._

 _What exactly is the message here? Is it meaningless suffering and hopelessness? Like, idk what the hell they were aiming for._

 _Anyway. Enough with that angsty edge-lord shitfest. Here's some more Clexa._

 _Enjoy~_

* * *

 _I'm feeling so good, but just can't explain_

 _You make my heart feel like,_

 _Like it's my brain_

 _-Hot Chip_

 **2.**

Two Months Ago...

It begins without fanfare, the end of Lexa's new sanity.

Clarke comes into the shop to buy a camera thirty minutes before the end of Lexa's shift, and the sight of her is like a shot of caffeine in the arm. Lexa is immediately intrigued, fascinated, the way she used to be with the rare agates her father bought her, sitting in the middle of her floor for hours, pouring over the beautiful crystals with a magnifying glass and reverent fingers. She'd always had a weakness for pretty things, and Lexa's gotten older, but some things never change. She watches with rapt attention now as the shop door swings shut, drawing a curious glance from her manager as he disappears into the back. Newly arrived, Clarke is makeup-free, wearing cut-off overalls that look like they've survived several previous owners, and her golden hair is tumbling out of a disintegrating bun. It's quietly mesmerizing. Lexa is frequently captivated by people who can pull off the 'disheveled' look with grace, and it's apparent as soon as Clarke speaks that she has grace in spades. Clothes aside, Clarke obviously comes from good stock.

She smiles faintly, unconsciously, as Clarke locks eyes with her, walks over to the counter, and begins, with a crisp, disarming smile, to explain her needs.

"I assume you want digital," Lexa says calmly, pulling a few popular models out of the glass display case," since they're easier to use."

Clarke's gaze flicks back and forth across her face, a tiny smirk playing on her lips. "Was that a veiled insult just now? Are you underestimating my prowess with a camera?"

Lexa flattens her palms against the glass countertop just so she can lean imperceptibly closer. "I don't think we're at the stage in our relationship yet where it's appropriate for me to underestimate your prowess."

Clarke arches a brow. "Oh, really."

Lexa shrugs coolly. "I don't even know your name."

"Would you like to?"

Clarke cocks a hip and crosses her arms, stands with a challenge, prepared to call Lexa's bluff, and Lexa's never met a challenge in a package as pretty as this one, so of course she accepts, accepts her undoing, her unraveling, pockets the item that will change everything, as innocuous as it seems at the time. It's a business card that Clarke finally hands over, twitter account, email address, and phone number all listed dead center on the navy blue cardstock under her name, printed in embossed, gold letters.

Clarke Griffin

Paint. Ceramics. Sculpture.

"And yes," Clarke says, looking up at Lexa through her lashes, "a DSLR will be fine. I'll take the Canon."

"Will you be needing any other lenses or filters?" Lexa asks, eyes half-lidded, jaw a little slack. "Maybe a tripod or...an external flash?"

Clarke slides her hand across the glass, fingers brushing Lexa's so delicately, so provocatively, that Lexa's heart rate nearly doubles. She can feel herself breaking out into a sweat. She can feel herself losing her cool.

Goddamnit.

Fucking pretty girls.

"Has anyone ever told you you're a great salesperson?" Clarke toys with the jade ring on Lexa's pointer finger. "You're very persuasive."

Lexa swallows and says, simply, "I try to use my powers for good," because Clarke is laying it on so thick that she almost can't breathe, let alone think of a witty reply.

Eventually, her manager, Dave, has to actually start ringing Clarke up because the shop's about to close and they've been flirting for thirty minutes, ignoring other customers, talking about Clarke's art, finding surreptitious little ways to touch each other without seeming too desperate.

"Call me."

Clarke says it like a promise as she takes her bags and waves over her shoulder.

Lexa stares out the storefront window for five whole minutes.

Finally, Dave grabs her coat off the back hook and practically shoves her out the door, keys jingling as he tugs them off his belt to lock up.

"Honestly, I don't care if you flirt with every customer that comes through the door as long as you sell merchandise like that."

"I just got lucky," Lexa says, shrugging.

Dave smirks. "I think you're about to get lucky again."

/ / /

 _Present Day…_

Snow continues to fall throughout the night and well into the morning. Clarke keeps the blinds open so they can watch the flakes swirl like snow-globe glitter in the streetlights, curled up around each other like stray cats, holding hands until sleep finally steals them both. Lexa doesn't dream at all. She doesn't wake up even once, instead gradually slipping back into consciousness late the following morning, rolling onto her side and bumping into Clarke, who is busy sketching into a Moleskine with a pencil.

"I thought you'd never wake up," she says softly, without looking up. "You were dead to the world."

"Did I snore?"

"No. You barely moved at all."

Lexa is perplexed by this news. She's been told by at least four bunkmates that she is a violent, jealous sleeper, prone to blanket theft and fits of restlessness. Lexa frowns and brushes her hair out of her eyes. She feels different. The nervous hum in body is gone, and something else has taken its place.

"It was a little creepy, actually," Clarke continues, unaware. "Corpse-like."

Lexa blinks the grogginess away. Maybe she's...rested? It's not quite that. It's something different. Lexa can't put her finger on it.

"Are you hungry?" Clarke closes her notebook with a snap and tosses it on the bedside table. When she turns back to Lexa her blue eyes are tender, but reserved. "I can make you something."

"Yeah, I'm…" Lexa pauses.

Clarke leans down to kiss her forehead. "Are you okay?"

Lexa nods, but she fixes her gaze on the ceiling, resolutely, and Clarke waits for as long as she can. Her patience is astounding, and Lexa loves her for it. Clarke always tries to give Lexa what she needs, unaware, or maybe unconcerned, that it'll never be enough, that Lexa has to reach back for the hand extended, that it's Lexa who has to return the offer, take the risk, take the plunge.

By the time Clarke's impatience gets the best of her, Lexa is trying not to panic.

"Do you want to leave?" Clarke asks, honestly, steadily, like she's prepared for any answer Lexa could possibly give her, like she could take it in stride, like she's strong enough for both of them.

Maybe she is.

"Yes," Lexa answers, and squeezes her eyes shut tight. "Yes, but...I shouldn't."

"...Why?"

"I don't want to hurt you."

Clarke doesn't miss a beat. "Why do you want to leave?"

Tears leak from the corners of Lexa's eyes and trickle into her ears. She grits her teeth. Her whole face is screwed up and she knows it must look like she's in pain, but Clarke doesn't touch her. Clarke knows.

"Because…" Lexa sucks in a deep breath, and her chin quivers a little. She's so weak when she's with Clarke. She hasn't been this weak since… "Because what will happen? If I stay?"

"I'll make you eggs." Clarke touches her then, light fingers brushing Lexa's arm, brushing off her fear of the unknown with something tangibly ordinary. "And turkey bacon. I think I even have some gluten free toast."

Lexa wants to laugh at Clarke's absurd, self-imposed dietary restrictions, because how pretentious can you be, honestly? But instead she wipes her eyes and reaches out to grasp Clarke's hand, entwining their fingers together.

"Clarke…"

"I'm here."

Lexa nods and tries to slow her breathing, goes through the routine that her last therapist taught her, the one that actually sort of helps, finally, after years of impromptu ER visits and nervous breakdowns in public locations. She counts slowly in her head, chases her breathing in and out, grips Clarke's hand tighter and focuses on the reciprocal strength she finds there, tells herself that Clarke will stay. Clarke will see. Clarke will understand. This is not an emergency. She is not in danger.

Lexa's breath hitches as she calms, a serpent of shame and fear coiling tighter in her chest.

"Clarke," she shivers and braces herself, speaks as steadily as she can, "we have a lot to talk about."

"We do, yeah."

Lexa swallows. "There's a lot you don't know about me."

"I know." Clarke lifts their joined hands and kisses Lexa's knuckles, one at a time. "It drives me crazy. You're really tight-lipped."

"If you knew me better you'd understand why."

"Well, I do want to know you better. I do want to understand why." Clarke's thumb swipes along Lexa's, and the blonde bites her lip, gaze dropping into her lap. "I mean, I like you. A lot. I want to know everything."

Lexa turns toward her wearing a pained expression. "No, you don't. Not everything."

"Not because I think it's all going to be fun and roses," Clarke elaborates, clearing her throat, "because I l-" She pauses. "Because I want to listen."

Lexa licks her lips. "I already have a therapist, Clarke."

"I know, that's not what I mean."

"I've had six therapists, actually."

Clarke huffs and looks away.

"Look," Lexa pulls Clarke's hand closer and places it over her chest, "it's not that I don't care about you, it's just that I've talked about all of this ad nauseum to six different people already and it doesn't necessarily help to keep talking about it. Sometimes I just want to walk away."

"But you can't just walk away from that. Those experiences make you you. How am I supposed to know you, really know you, if you won't share them with me?"

"I don't want you to know that side of me."

Clarke tugs her hand away. "Lexa-"

"-I have to believe that I can move past that stuff, Clarke." Lexa holds her troubled gaze, tries to impart the importance of this thing to her. "Everytime I bring it up it's like I'm back in the past, reliving that shit all over again. I want to move on. I want to just… I want to live now."

Clarke nods to show that she understands, but she doesn't, even though she'll try. Lexa knows that she'll try until she's frustrated, until it hurts, until she's completely at a loss and even a little bitter, because Clarke cares. Lexa is only just beginning to understand how much.

"Stay, and let's make breakfast," Clarke says.

She leans in and kisses Lexa soundly.

Moments later, she's gone, rising from the bed, and Lexa listens to her feet pad away with a heavy weight settling in her stomach.

/ / /

The world outside is a bright, blinding white, and the streets are impassable, so Lexa calls into work and walks with Clarke down to the 7-Eleven to buy milk and ham.

"I actually like terrible weather," Clarke says, sunglasses on, gazing up into the dark grey sky. "It makes being indoors feel extra cozy, and it's sort of exciting."

Lexa turns and watches her as she talks. Her blonde hair is pulled up in a messy bun, tamed with an army of bobby pins. Earlier, Lexa had watched her do it in the mirror and tried to find some rhyme or reason to Clarke's routine, but it was hopeless. Clarke's nimble fingers were too fast, too practised, and, anyway, Lexa's no beauty queen. She goes with one makeup style, which Gustus calls 'melancholic chic', and is perfectly comfortable being a one trick pony. Her own hair is a bird's nest of waves, curls, and tangles, which she has swept up into a haphazard ponytail. If Clarke cares about the discrepancy between their personal hygiene skills she hasn't bothered to say so, and Lexa's not sure she would be able to change that about herself, regardless.

"I like the sun," Lexa says, kicking at a snowdrift that has blown up against a fire hydrant. "Give me a cold beer on a hot day 365 days a year."

"You only say that because you've never lived in a hot climate."

"How would you know where I've lived?"

"Have you?"

Lexa scowls and stuffs her hands in her pockets, gloveless and cold. "No."

Clarke laughs and nudges Lexa's shoulder. "You set yourself up for that one, dork."

"Nerd."

"Ms. Nerd, to you."

Lexa smiles and nudges back.

"I went to UCLA because I thought I loved the sun, and, well." Clarke shrugs. "I always just missed the rain."

Lexa peers around at the snow, at the other residents emerging from their apartments in hats and scarves. "I guess it's not so bad."

"Trust me, you'd miss it," Clarke grins and Lexa's heart flutters, caught like a moth in a flame. "We live in a pretty amazing place, and Californians are just so...Californian."

Well. Lexa can't really deny that.

When they reach the 7-Eleven, Clarke goes inside to grab the food, but Lexa hangs back when she spots a familiar face, pale and hollowed, lurking around the corner under an awning. He's dressed too lightly for the cold, and he looks even rougher than the last time she saw him, strawberry blonde hair wilder, more unkempt, the stubble on his face a little longer. He's hugging himself with one arm, smoking a cigarette with the other, chapped lips pressed into a thin line.

He spots her as she approaches and straightens up immediately.

"Spare some change?" he mumbles.

"Hey, Aden," she gives him a quick once over. "Aren't you cold?"

His eyes narrow for a second, but then they sharpen, and the fog clears. This time when he blinks, he's actually looking at her.

"Hi, um," he scratches at the stubble on his chin, "um, Lexa. Hi, Lexa."

She offers him a tiny smile. "How are you?"

"I used to like the snow," he kicks at the pavement, not yet shoveled or cleared by the shopkeeper, "when I had a roof."

Lexa nods. "Where's your tent?"

"Fuckin' sprung a leak," he says bitterly. "Had to trash it this time."

He won't meet her gaze, and Lexa can read between the lines. One pocket knife, well-aimed, will tear through most fabrics like butter.

"Do you need another one?"

"I dunno." He shrugs and gives her a pointed look. "It might just spring another leak."

"What about a tarp?"

He scoffs. "Enough about me, okay?" His dull eyes study hers. "What happened with your girl?"

Lexa hooks a thumb. "Inside."

"So you didn't pussy out."

She smirks and steps closer to lean up next to him against the wall. "I tried, but she's pretty persuasive." Aden makes a lewd gesture and Lexa snorts. "That, too."

"Hey, listen," he shuffles his feet, and Lexa notices a hole forming in the toe of his right shoe, "would you maybe, like, buy me a sandwich or something?"

"Kitchens are closed?"

"Delayed." He scratches the back of his neck. "The fuckin' snow, you know."

"Yeah, alright. I'll buy you a sandwich," Lexa crosses her arms and squares her shoulders, "but I don't do handouts."

"The hell does that mean?"

"It means I don't do charity. You'll owe me something."

"You're not trying to fuckin' pimp me, are you?"

Lexa recoils. "Gross. No."

Aden makes a face, and snorts, spreading his arms in exasperation. "So then what do you want? I got nothin'."

"Only the pleasure of your company," she says dryly, and Aden rolls his eyes, turning away with a profanity-laden grumble.

"I'm a shit conversationalist."

"True."

"Hey! Fuck you!"

"Sorry for being so agreeable."

"God, woman."

"Woman, huh." Lexa wrinkles her nose. "I'm getting old."

"Sure are."

"Shut hell up, hobo Joe."

"Hobo Joe? What the-"

"-Who's your new friend, Lex?" Clarke sweeps in like a ray of sun on a cloudy day, and her arrival startles them both.

Lexa stuffs her hands in her pockets. "This is Aden."

"Nice to meet you. I'm Clarke." She raises her hands, demonstrating the pair of bags clenched in each apologetically. "Sorry, I'd shake your hand, but-"

"-But you don't wanna touch a dirty street kid," Aden sneers. "I get it."

Lexa glares at him and begins to interject, but Clarke just rolls her eyes.

"What a ray of sunshine you are. I think you need better taste in friends, Lex."

"Whatever," Aden retorts, because he's young and antagonistic, and he can't help himself, "I'm a great friend."

Lexa smiles at him in amusement. She remembers what that's like.

"So, we're friends now, officially?"

Aden glowers and flicks his cigarette butt into the snow, burned out and forgotten in the midst of their conversation. He folds both arms across his chest, and his bony shoulders jut out of his baggy sweatshirt, and Clarke's eyes widen a little.

"I was gonna buy him a sandwich," Lexa says, anticipating Clarke's concern, "in exchange for a favor."

"Buy him two." Clarke hands her the change from the previous sale. "Two sandwiches, two favors."

"I didn't agree to that," Aden gripes, "and you still haven't told me what you want."

Lexa concedes with an appraising look. She reaches into her leather bag and pulls out her notebook, followed shortly by a pen. She scribbles quickly on a piece of paper, tears it out, and hands it to him.

"This is my cell. I want you to call me if you need anything."

Aden accepts the paper warily. "Okay. I guess."

"Thanks. Keep Clarke company. I'm going to get you some sandwiches."

"Wait!" he calls after her, face uncertain. "I don't have a phone!"

"So, borrow one!" Lexa calls back. "You'll figure it out!"

/ / /

When they get back to the apartment she asks to use Clarke's computer, and Clarke doesn't hesitate or stop to ask why. She slips off her wet snow boots and pads into her bedroom to retrieve it. Moments later, she returns carrying a silver Macbook covered in swirling, multicolored designs, obviously done by Clarke's own hand. She sets it down on the table, and Lexa realizes that it's just Sharpie, wearing away in some places with use. What Clarke has done is rather genius, in Lexa's opinion, not that she's good with art. Some of the lines have been smeared and blended together to form overlapping nebulas of color across the metal surface, a cosmic background over which Clarke has sketched stark, black tribal shapes.

Lexa lets her fingers trace over them for a minute while Clarke throws lunch together in the kitchen. She's almost reluctant to open the laptop.

"Whatcha lookin' for?" Clarke asks, rounding the counter with two bowls in hand.

Lexa is staring intently at the screen, struggling to acclimate herself to the Mac's unfamiliar trackpad. Her own computer is hot garbage just waiting for the worst possible moment to kick the bucket, and its trackpad requires far more force than Clarke's oversensitive one.

"Not what," Lexa murmurs, finally managing to open up an internet browser, "who."

Clarke is used to Lexa's cryptic replies by now, so she just takes a bite of her macaroni and ham, and waits for some sort of elaboration. Her patience is rewarded a minute later when Lexa has successfully logged into her email inbox.

"I need to get in contact with someone I haven't spoken to in a while."

Clarke chews slowly. "For Aden?"

"Yes," Lexa nods, "but also for me."

"A ghost from your past?"

Lexa's fingers pause over the keys as she considers Clarke's words.

"It's me who's the ghost," she replies at length, glancing away out the window. "I'm the skeleton in the closet."

Clarke is quiet as Lexa composes her email.

She leaves for her studio an hour later, and Lexa takes the Max home.

/ / /

Anya's eyeliner is smudged, again. Lexa notes it and bites her lip, fingers itching for her camera.

It's a marker of sorts. It pegs Anya for a type, the staying up late and sleeping all day type. By now, Lexa can tell when Anya's left it on through the night because she doesn't bother fixing it in the morning, just rims on another layer and goes out, confident enough in her beauty to let everyone else sum it up for themselves.

It's a small detail, one of many that make up her cousin's angular, cutting features, but it's the first thing Lexa notices when they sit down. Not the smell of cigarette smoke lingering on Anya's clothes, not the dark impression of new ink beneath her thin Sleater-Kinney shirt, just a smeared border of black around her hard brown eyes. Lexa thinks of how she'd frame the shot, how she'd set up the lighting. Anya's ombre hair has red streaks in it this time, teased up with hairspray and held back across her forehead by a folded blue bandana. She's loaded up her fingers with chunky rings, and strapped a rather ostentatious gunmetal watch to her left wrist, peaking out beneath the sleeve of her denim jacket. Lexa mentally arranges it all. There's a certain gravity to her look, such that the small bar seems to orbit around her. Men and women stare as they come in the door, feet dragging, glances lingering. It's been this way since Anya hit puberty. Anya's such a good subject to study.

Lexa smiles and swirls her beer.

"So, you told someone," Anya says.

And just like that, they're getting to the point. Anya always dives right in, hates bullshit and small talk and everything about it, and Lexa forgets sometimes until it shocks her, the bluntness, the direct confrontation of the elephant in the room with a 12 gage shotgun to the face.

Lexa's fingernails scrape gently against the table.

"Clarke."

"The artist?"

"Yeah." Lexa leans back and rakes her fingers through her hair. "The artist."

Next to Anya she's an uncollected mess, wild hair, sloppily laced Doc Martens, faded jeans, and an over-sized animal sweater with stretched out sleeves. She has no viable defense for her state, except that she's slept less than 20 hours in five days and her head is filled with anxious sparks, and honestly, she's never been particularly good at keeping her shit together when there's a pretty girl around. Always just a bit too jittery. This is par for the course.

"All of it?"

"Definitely not. Just a little bit, for now."

Anya quirks a brow. "How'd she take it?"

"She made me eat chicken quinoa salad and spooned with me until I fell asleep."

"Gross."

"Yeah." Lexa's lips twitch.

"I guess that's good."

"She let me sleep in her bed for 10 hours." Lexa shrugs. "I think that's good."

"And she didn't seem weird about it?"

"Some. More upset than weird."

Anya sips her drink, something dark and frothy that the bartender sent over earlier with a nod. "How does she afford that fancy apartment, anyway? Art pays shit."

"She's been building up her clientele, and her parents are loaded."

"Rich bitch. Nice."

Lexa frowns. "Except she's not a bitch."

Anya glances sidelong at the TV, checking the score of the Blazers game. "It's just a saying."

"It's a shitty saying." Lexa huffs and kills her beer. "Clarke's the complete opposite of that stereotype. I don't want you to get the wrong idea."

"I don't have any ideas about her," Anya's sharp eyes slide back to hers, "I only know what you've told me."

Lexa sets her empty glass on the table and it thumps just a little too hard. Her hackles are raised. Her jaw is clenched. She's just a little too agitated for the conversation she's having, but it's important that Anya understands. Not just anybody gets to know.

"I was about to break her heart," Lexa admits, chewing her thumbnail," and then I couldn't."

Anya lifts her hand and signals the bartender, pointing to Lexa's empty glass. "You want another Red Thistle Ale?"

"Whatever. Sure."

Anya gives the bearded man behind the counter a thumbs up and then tugs on the lapels of her denim jacket, toying with a frayed edge. Her red fingernail polish is perfectly applied, a fresh coat that hasn't chipped yet. It will soon enough.

She watches Lexa closely for a minute. Her eyes flit back and forth, reconsidering the evidence against the weight of these new details. No matter how long they've know each other, Lexa keeps her cards pretty close to the chest, and even Anya struggles sometimes to catch the subtler clues.

"So, you decided not to do it."

"I couldn't. Well, I did, but then I came back." Lexa fidgets, eyes darting around the cramped bar. "I had to explain. I...had to see her."

"You had an episode," Anya surmises, snapping her fingers with the realization, "because of her."

"It hasn't happened in a long time."

Anya looks away. "Yeah, okay."

"No really." Lexa yanks her thumb from her mouth and drums her fingers on the waxy, wooden table top. "Clarke gets under my skin."

"In a good way?"

"I hope so, because I can't keep her out."

A fresh pint arrives on the table and Lexa snatches it up, taking an eager gulp. Anya watches Lexa avoid her gaze for a minute.

"You're obsessing."

"No."

"Yes."

"...Maybe."

"Are you gonna be okay?" Anya's dark gaze traces her features again. "You seem almost manic."

Lexa hums nervously. "Wouldn't be the first time."

"Are you happy?"

"I feel like I'm full of helium, but at the same time I'm almost afraid to let myself be happy. Is this always what it feels like?"

"I wouldn't know." Anya rolls her eyes. "What is it about Clarke?"

"She's special. I don't know. She's… she's just better than other people."

Anya snorts, but her tone is cautionary. "I've heard you say that before."

"I was wrong before."

"Everything you've said… You elevate her. Don't put her on a pedestal."

Lexa shakes her head, grips her pint glass tight in her hand, and gives Anya a meaningful look. "Clarke elevates herself."


	3. Slice 3

_5.5.16_

 _Not to put this bad karma out there in the world, but I can't shake this sinking feeling that Root and/or Shaw are going to die in POI this season. I saw some rumblings in an interview somewhere, some speculations from the interviewer, and the showrunner said something about "treating the characters with absolute respect, no matter what happens", and every lesbian television viewer on the planet should be nervous after reading a statement like that._

 _God. Wtf is going on right now? Like, not just in TV. This is a post Trump-for-president world, y'all. Shit's crazy._

 _Anyway, going back in time a little bit with this chapter, giving you a window into Lexa's turbulent past. FYI, if you guys have any prompts or ideas for these characters, please don't hesitate to send them to me at aeschylusrex on tumblr._

 _Enjoy!_

* * *

 _I was in a fog, I didn't notice everything_  
 _Was coming all apart inside of me_  
 _There wasn't anyway for anyone to settle in_  
 _You made a slow disaster out of me_

 _There's a radiant darkness upon us_  
 _But I don't want you to worry_  
 _I was careful but nothing is harmless_  
 _Baby you better hurry_

 _-The National_

 **3.**

 _7 Years Ago..._

Lexa is 16 years old, three months shy of her 17th birthday, standing next to the dumpster outside a cocktail bar on Sandy Boulevard. The world is grey and more rain clouds are threatening on the horizon, but she doesn't care. She doesn't care about much lately. It's no use getting attached to things that change, and life is a revolving door of uninterested faces. She eyes the brackish pools cradled in the uneven dips of the old pavement, reflecting silver light from the sky, and waits.

In her hand, a cheap flip phone buzzes and Lexa whips it open to find a message from her cousin.

 _im fkn sick of beaver-tucky_

 _srsly fck this place_

 _these hillbillies flip out over a mf nosering. i dont care how cheap the rent is. im moving back to pdx_

Lexa types a quick response.

 _new bling? send pic_

Moments later, her phone buzzes again and Lexa opens the attachment, smirking down at a proud, defiant Anya, pointing to a silver ring through her left nostril.

 _sweet_

 _thx_

 _how'd aunt c take it?_

 _havnt told them yet_

 _good luck w that_

 _lol fuck off_

Shoes sliding over gravel and pavement catch Lexa's attention and she looks up to see Costia slinking into the alley, glancing furtively over her shoulder. Her dark brown hair is falling out of a French braid, bangs framing her pretty, classically mediterranean features, and her makeup is still perfect, winged eyeliner and bronze eye shadow blended to draw the flecks of gold out of her caramel brown eyes. Lexa swallows slowly, swallows down everything she feels about it. Costia is one of the few things she _does_ care about, unfortunately, and she has enough street smarts for the both of them, but Costia is pretty conspicuous in her uniform skirt and peacoat, more so than Lexa. Adults are far more likely to notice a Catholic school girl in a sketchy back alley than another Grant brat wearing dark, ripped up clothes.

Lexa's brow twitches in annoyance. It's not like they can really afford the risk.

"I thought I told you to change."

Costia's head turns at the sound of her voice. She spots Lexa behind the dumpster and trudges over, arms folded across her chest, head down. The heels of her loafers skid as she pulls up, shifting her backpack on her shoulder nervously. She tucks a lock of hair over one ear and sniffs.

"It smells gross back here."

"We're in an alley," Lexa observes, irately. "Alleys usually smell gross. Didn't you have some track sweats or something you could wear?"

Costia rolls her eyes and looks over her shoulder. "No, I didn't have time. I was gonna miss the bus."

"You're gonna get us caught," Lexa grumbles, slouching further into her old sheepskin jacket.

"Look," Costia bites her lip, and hugs herself tighter. "I know I said 'yes' to this before, but I'm not so sure anymore."

"What'd you tell Martha?"

"I told _Mom_ that I'm meeting you at the library to study."

Lexa shrugs, turning her gaze away. "Did she buy it?"

"I guess so, but seriously, Lex, I've got a bad feeling about this."

"You've got bad feelings about everything."

"Um, that's because most of your ideas are terrible."

Lexa scowls and kicks a rock into the back wall of the bar. "You asked me to do this, remember? And you didn't have to come along."

"You get puppy dog eyes when I don't. Besides, who's gonna keep you out of trouble?"

Lexa bristles. "I can take care of myself."

"Maybe," Costia smiles, shows all of her perfectly straight, pearly white teeth, and it makes Lexa's stomach twist, "but I'm better at it."

Which is true, much as Lexa hates to admit it. Then again, at 17, Costia is better at a lot of things, like grades and socializing and staying out of trouble. Costia gets awards at school while Lexa gets Cs. Costia runs track while Lexa runs from bullies. Costia has parents who will love her no matter what. Lexa has foster parents who will love her as long as she goes with the program. The deck is stacked against her. At this rate, she's just padding the statistics.

She's a bullet-pointed list of unsavory personality flaws, alphabetized and annotated with the notes of all her previous case workers. And yet, Costia still reached out to her when she arrived at the Papanicolaou house. And Costia still takes care of her when she has panic attacks. Costia keeps her secrets and Costia sneaks into her bed on the worst nights, cuddled up close, babbling to her about petty drama between the girls at St. Mary's until Lexa falls asleep.

It's because of Costia that Lexa feels more on the hook with this family. She's not perfect, but she makes an effort. Martha and Nicolai buy her clothes and ask about school. They show up to her parent teacher conferences. They schedule her doctors appointments and they buy her favorite cereal at the store. She feels like, maybe, they would miss her if she vanished. So, maybe she doesn't mind going along with this program so much. Maybe she feels a little guilty about sucking their perfect daughter into her gritty, grimey world, but Costia has this smile that makes her heart flutter, and Costia wants to be a part of it. It means a lot in the first place. It means even more that it's _Costia_ , and Lexa, who once went three months without speaking, who once beat the shit out of a foster mother's lecherous nephew, who once told the narcotics detective who arrested her to 'eat a dick', can't say no to Costia.

Costia gets anything she asks for.

Lexa meets Costia's gaze and forgets herself for a moment, stalled by the earnest glimmer she finds there. She always has to shake herself awake. She always has to shake herself out of the dream.

"If you wanna go you need to leave now. It's almost 4:30."

Costia's frowns. "I'm not leaving you here by yourself."

"I can handle myself. Promise. I've done this before."

"It's fine. I'm staying." Costia smirks, a quick little twist of her plump lips. "Like you said, you're doing this for me, so I can't just leave you here."

Lexa shrugs and averts her eyes. "You could."

A warm hand reaches out and grips her arm. "Yeah, but I'm not going to."

Without warning, the back door of the cocktail lounge swings open with a loud screech, rusty hinges grinding past each other. Costia jumps and covers her mouth, but Lexa keeps herself composed, calm and collected. A tall, sour-faced waitress emerges from inside, dressed in a tight, black miniskirt and tank top. A duck-cloth coat, clearly stolen from some boyfriend, is thrown on over the skimpy ensemble, and the sheer amount of makeup ringed around her eyes looks a bit comical in the light of day. Her dirty-blonde hair catches the breeze and billows out a bit as she sizes them up. Her gaze is sharp and clinical, practiced at sussing out dubious situations. She releases the door and lets it slam behind her.

"Well, well, well." The waitress cocks her hip. "If it isn't the fosters."

Lexa nods. "Hey, Echo."

"You've got some nerve showing up here, Woods."

"I just need the weed," Lexa says. "I don't plan to hang around."

"That's good, because Eddie still wants you dead."

Costia shoots Lexa a loaded glance that Lexa studiously ignores, but Echo doesn't miss it. Echo doesn't miss very much.

Lexa keeps her face carefully neutral, fighting against her natural instinct to flinch. "Yeah, well, he can get in line."

"Don't tempt fate, Woods. There are worse things than death."

Costia tugs her sleeve. "Who's Eddie?"

"Not now, C."

Echo's sharp eyes narrow, and she smirks, folding her arms across her chest. "You didn't tell your new fam about Nia, huh?"

"Shut up, Echo."

"Oh, that's fucking rich."

"Shut _up_ , Echo."

"Hey, whatever." Echo laughs and shrugs. "She's gonna find out at the worst possible time, you know. That's how these things always work."

Costia's fingers tighten on Lexa's sleeve. "Lexa, find out what? What's she talking about?"

"Later, C, okay?

"Lexa, let's go. I don't like this."

Lexa grits her teeth. "You're freaking her out, Echo, fucking drop it already."

"Hey," Echo spreads her hands in a placating motion, "I'm just here to sell you weed like you asked. You don't want it, you can call somebody else."

Lexa rips a crumpled fifty dollar bill from her pocket and shoves it at Echo. "Fine. Hurry up."

"Rude," Echo sneers, snatching the money. "Didn't your parents teach you any manners? Oh, wait."

"Echo, I swear to god-"

"-You'll what? Rat me out?"

"Go to hell."

"You know, you should be a lot nicer to me, considering all the hot college girls I've set you up with."

Lexa freezes, blood draining from her face. It's a wounding blow delivered with breathtaking precision. Echo smirks and pulls a bag of weed from her jacket's inner pocket, handing it over with a harsh laugh.

"We talked about this." Lexa levels a contemptuous glare at Echo, who seems to take in stride, hip still cocked, brow still arched. "I asked you to be discrete."

Costia's eyes widen, but Lexa avoids her gaze, pale and still, lips pressed into a thin, hard line.

"Right, whatever. I get it." Echo shrugs as Lexa mechanically takes the weeds and stuffs it away. "I should've guessed that if you hadn't told her about Nia, you probably hadn't told her about your weekend extracurriculars either."

"Echo."

"Look, I'm sorry, Woods." Echo sighs and crosses her arms again. "I didn't think it was a big a deal. It's the 21st century, you know. Who cares if you fuck girls?"

If possible, Lexa grows even paler, even stiller, and Costia's stunned silence is even more damning. Lexa know she's screwed up. Again.

"I wasn't ready to talk about it," she mumbles.

Echo shrugs. "Well, you looked pretty _ready_ last week with what's-her-name. Ruby or whatever."

"Please stop."

"I'm just saying, you weren't acting like you were trying to keep it a secret."

"I was coked up!" Lexa splutters. "Of course I fucking wasn't!"

"Yeah? Whose fault is that?"

"Yours!"

Echo rolls her eyes."Oh my god. Fuck you, Lexa. That shit ain't cheap, okay? You're fucking welcome."

Lexa's hands ball into fists, seething, embarrassed, humiliated, and ready to do something stupid to recover what little of her dignity is left, but then Costia is murmuring something quietly in her ear and pulling her back.

"C'mon, Lex, let's get outta here."

"You were right," Lexa mutters, eyes burning. "This was a bad idea."

Echo watches them critically and laughs. "It's her, isn't it?"

"Echo! I swear to god-"

"-I won't, Lexa. Chill out." Echo checks the time on her phone and hunches her shoulders against the chill. "Party at Brian's next Saturday. You there?"

"Fuck no," Lexa spits.

"Suit yourself." Echo turns to head back inside with a curt wave over her shoulder. "Bye, fosters! Make good choices!"

The rusted door creaks and slams again, and immediately, Lexa turns and wrenches from Costia's grasp. Her heart is hammering in her chest, like it might explode if she doesn't move.

"Here."

She tosses the bag of weed on the ground behind her and storms off toward the street, pack bouncing against her back. Tears are stinging at the corners of her eyes, but she hasn't cried since the trial and she doesn't plan to start again now. She wipes her nose on her sleeve and presses on around the corner, ignoring Costia's calls, her quick steps scraping against the crumbling pavement in hot pursuit. Lexa doesn't care. She knows how to lose a tail if she needs to, and there are plenty of places to hide in this part of town.

Sandy Boulevard is busy with rush hour traffic and slick from lingering rain, turbid water splashed out of potholes, pouring out of spouts, streaming out of gutters. The clouds are threatening again, wet and swollen, swooping lower, growing darker with the setting sun, and it's perfect, Lexa thinks. The darkness is perfect, is beautiful. Enveloping, erasing. There is no sin black enough that the coming night can't obscure. Every shadow fades when the sun goes down, even hers.

"Lexa!"

Except- Right. Except Costia won't. She'll still be real. Warm flesh and blood. She'll chase Lexa into the dark even if it hurts them both. She's reckless that way, faultless that way.

"Lexa, wait! Stop!"

Lexa burns to to keep moving, but she stops.

A hand settles on her arm, fingers curling around and squeezing tight like it'll anchor her there, like it'll keep Lexa from vanishing, and who knows? Maybe it will.

"I know you've been in trouble before-"

"-No-"

Costia barrels on. "-I know, okay? The social worker told us you had a rough time at your last couple homes."

"Costia-"

"-It's okay."

"It's not okay!" Lexa whirls around, throwing Costia off balance. "Your parents love you no matter what! It's biology! But not me!"

"They do love you!"

"But it's conditional, okay? It's conditional! If I screw up, if they find out about all this shit from my past they won't hesitate to kick me out, and I can't handle that right now, okay?"

"I won't tell them."

Lexa shakes her head, shoves her away, starts to walk, but Costia follows. Costia pursues.

"Lexa, wait! I won't! I won't tell them."

A hand grips her wrist, pulling her back, and Lexa lets herself be pulled, lets Costia reel her emotions back in. She's shaking lightly, in spite of herself. Adrenalin is pumping through her veins. She knows she's already given herself away. She doesn't react like this unless she cares, and she cares a lot.

"You promise?"

"I promise, okay? I promise. Please come home with me." Costia's voice quiets and softens, more earnest than Lexa's ever heard it. "It's your home, too."

Lexa licks her lips, swallows, feels the pieces in her chest clicking into place, and knows that she won't be going anywhere else tonight. Costia's fingers lace together with hers and squeeze. It's the more comforting thing she's ever felt.

"You didn't tell me you were gay."

Lexa toes at the sidewalk. "I'm not."

"It's okay if you are."

"I'm not."

Costia eyes her dubiously. "Okay."

"Just," Lexa huffs and blinks back her tears, glancing around helplessly at the busy street, "just take me home okay."

Costia squeezes her hands once more and releases it, threading her arm through Lexa's like always. "Okay. Let's go."

/ / /

 _Present Day..._

Clarke is successful in ways that Lexa can't imagine, and it has nothing to with money and everything to do with fully realized self-expression. Clarke's art is inspiring because it is so, uncompromisingly _Clarke_. A sketch of Lexa's profile, drawn on a napkin with a pilfered ballpoint pen from the breakfast place, is stuck to Lexa's fridge. She'll have it framed someday, coffee stain and all, because it's beautiful. She's seen 10 foot canvases in museums less beautiful than Clarke's stained diner sketches. It makes her cry one morning on her way out the door, coat clutched in one hand, heart in the other, overwhelmed by the small mercies, the little gifts, the flashes of kindness that Clarke Griffin has shown her all along. Clarke has always glowed with a light that even Lexa, in her cloud of radiant darkness, couldn't miss.

Of course, the obvious downside to Clarke's burgeoning success is the travel. She's called away to install a series of sculptures in some library at the University of Washington just days after their dramatic snow-day-make-up-sex, and Lexa is left to her own devices for nearly a week. The anxiety wouldn't even be half as bad if she could drink, smoke, and fuck it out, but times have changed, Clarke is gone, and Anya makes a habit of swinging by the apartment everyday, or, at the very least, sending Gustus by when she can't make it. Lexa is stuck doing productive, heart healthy things with her energy.

"Run until you're tired," her therapist says blithely. "Go hit a punching bag. Go for a hike."

Lexa nods quickly, but her knees are bouncing up and down, and she's having trouble keeping eye contact with him. She feels like she could sprint a mile. She feels like her chest could explode all over the nondescript IKEA coffee table. Her teeth are shivering in her skull. Everything rattles when she tries to sit still.

"I'm anxious," is all she says. "I can't stop. I've tried all the usual stuff."

Dr. Kendall nods and makes a note on his pad. He's balding, almost completely bald now, actually, and he wears little round glasses with thin wire frames that remind Lexa of a college professor. Gary, as he prefers to be called, is slender and fit, a waif of a man that spends his free time reading thick books and biking around town. He's so healthy, so put together. Lexa's not really sure how she got stuck with him, but he's been pretty determined to stick. No one else has tried so hard to earn her respect.

"Here?" He points to his head. "Or here?" He points to his chest.

"I don't know. I don't know." Lexa wrings her hands. "It's like- fuck, it's like I'm just- My heart won't stop racing and I can't stop shaking. Or thinking. Shaking and thinking."

"Have you tried the beta-blocker?"

"I ran out months ago."

Gary almost rolls his eyes, managing to stop himself at the very last second by clearing his throat and pretending to scribble something on his pad. "You should have told me sooner. I could've fixed that."

"I honestly just forgot." Lexa gives him a jerky shrug. "I'm sorry, okay?"

She'd been doing so well before Clarke. It had been ages since she'd had any need for the drugs. She intimately understands now what it means to be lulled into a false sense of security.

"Let's get that sorted out first," he says.

Does he sound disappointed? Lexa squints. He does, doesn't he? His eyes are narrowed as he makes a note and reaches for his phone, firing off a message to her psychiatrist. He looks like he's trying not to feel one way or the other about it. Like he's trying to keep his expression neutral, but she's never sure if she's making it up. Gary always says that patients project onto their therapists, and it makes her feel juvenile, like she's a child, just vomiting her emotions onto everyone around her. Out of control with no perspective whatsoever. It makes her feel 17 again, watching Costia's pale face disappear behind the doors of an ambulance.

"Lexa?"

She looks up, checks her wristwatch. Five minutes have passed.

"Sorry," she murmurs.

"Are you sleeping?"

"No." She hugs herself. "Well, maybe- maybe a little bit. More than last week."

"What about work?"

"I had to quit before I was fired."

Gary's mouth twitches. "How are you paying the bills?"

Lexa digs her nails into her biceps. "I still have the freelancing gigs. Anya hooked me up with a band that needs a spread for their tour. I'm trying to network with them."

"So, you're keeping odd hours, then."

"Yeah."

Gary's phone buzzes and he checks the screen. "Dr. Nguyen is calling in your prescription. It should be ready in a couple hours."

Lexa nods sharply and picks at the hole in her jeans. Her fingers slip under the edge of the denim and slide along the softened edge. It's only there because she picks at it in the first place. Over time, a single loose string has grown into a gaping split across the knee. She keeps telling herself to stop, but she doesn't stop. She doesn't really want to stop anyway. The way she sees it, this is nature at work. Nothing gold can stay.

"Make sure you go pick it up today. It'll stop the shaking."

Lexa clears her throat. "Thanks."

"Sure." Gary offers a fleeting smile. "Let's talk about your new girlfriend."

Lexa's heart leaps, almost painfully, and she nearly gasps.

His words feel like a steel-toed kick to the chest.

His words raise the dead.

"Please don't call her that," Lexa pleads, fleeting gaze fixing on his with alarming clarity.

Gary frowns, noting her panic with concern, pen slipping from his fingers onto the notebook in his lap. "Why not?"

"Because, once something starts it has to end." Lexa pushes her hair out of her face, pulls it back, tugs until it hurts, lets it fall forward again. "Everything does. Everything has a beginning and an end."

"True." Gary nods.

"A therapist agreeing with me?" Lexa snorts sadly. "I must be high."

"I can't dispute the truth," he concedes, spreading his lean arms in a show of characteristic diplomacy. "You're right. Nothing lasts forever."

Lexa blinks back the familiar sting of moisture. His confirmation hurts. She feels desperately hopeless all of a sudden. It seems there is no end to the tears she can cry for Clarke.

"But why," Gary asks, lightly, rhetorically, "do you have to be the one to end it?"

"Me? What?" Lexa blinks angrily. "I'm not ending anything."

"You are. Before it can even begin."

"I love her," Lexa grits.

Dr. Kendall leans forward in his leather chair, reclaiming his hard-earned, PhD-gilded authority with squared shoulders and a stern gaze. "But you don't let her love you back."

"Yes, I do!" Lexa argues, but already she can see the corner she has painted herself into. His logic is winning out. "I _do_."

"If she wants to be yours, let her be yours."

"How do you _even_ know she wants to be mine?"

"Who wouldn't want to be yours, Lexa?" Gary smiles sadly. "You're a wonderful person."

"But I'm a disaster," Lexa insists, tears threatening to fall. "I'm a fuck up. I can't hold a fucking job and I've got a mountain of baggage. What could Clarke possibly see in me?"

"Probably the same things I see you in," Gary assures, leaning back again, "but you need to ask Clarke that question."

"I can't."

"You need to trust her enough to let her answer. If you can't do that then this is already over before it's even started. Love is a choice, Lexa. Let Clarke choose you."

"What if she doesn't, though? What if she _doesn't_ choose me?"

"That's the risk we all take," Gary smiles, "but, for what it's worth, I have a good feeling about this one."

/ / /

 _Two Months Ago…_

Clarke shows up to their first date dressed like frat boy covered in paint. She's wearing black skinny jeans, and an oxford grey crewneck sweatshirt that says 'SUPREME' across the front in blocky, maroon letters. Her long blonde hair is straightened, and it cascades like twin waterfalls of gold from a black, ribbed beanie, spilling over her shoulders onto her chest and down her back. Her high tops, which were possibly white once, now look as though they've been dipped in paint and subjected to the Jackson Pollock treatment, smeared and splattered with every imaginable color. Her black pants are less covered, but the effect is similar, as if she's been splashing in puddles of paint instead of rainwater on the sidewalk. Even her sweatshirt, mostly clean at first glance, is stained with errant, uneven brushstrokes of purple and orange. In fact, Lexa realizes, giving Clarke a slow, appreciative once over, the only part of her that hasn't apparently been touched by paint is her beanie.

Lexa arches a brow, even though it's all for show. She doesn't really care one way or the other. To her, Clarke would be gorgeous in a burlap sack. Of course, Clarke doesn't need to know that right away.

"Ready to go dumpster diving?" Lexa asks, straight-faced.

Clarke pants, bent over with hands on her knees, apparently catching her breath. "You said...casual."

Lexa snorts and glances down at her own jeans, flannel, and combat boots ensemble, an outfit that Anya had affectionately called "the gayest thing I've ever fucking seen" as she was leaving the apartment.

"Yeah I guess I did." She smirks. "I didn't realize it was a competition, though."

Clarke shoves her with a surprising amount of force, and laughs, still swallowing down lungfuls of air. "I basically had to..run all the way from my...studio...er, my car." She straightens up and pins Lexa with a brilliant smile. "Sorry. I really...lose track of time in there."

She tugs off her beanie, and musses her hair, fluffing it, puffing it, dragging it over one shoulder, running her fingers through it as she lifts it off her neck. Lexa doesn't realize she's staring until Clarke ducks a bit to catch her gaze, and by then it's too late to pretend that she's still unaffected, mouth hanging ajar, heat rushing into her cheeks. Lexa has to drop her eyes and clear her throat once, twice, three times, before she can face Clarke again.

The expression she finds waiting for her is pure filth.

"I don't do hookups on the first date," Clarke says, "but you're making me reconsider my policy."

Clarke winks, her voice even huskier from her sprint, hot like molasses and sandpaper and the distinct, throaty rasp girls get after a straight shot of whiskey. As if Lexa needed anything else to rile her up. It's a spark to a can of gasoline. The effect is instantaneous, uncontainable. Lexa's nerves hum under her skin like an electric generator, and she can't find the off switch.

"Let's walk." She takes Clarke by the arm and leads her along the sidewalk, eyes fixed forward with steely determination.

"I thought we were going to get drinks?" Clarke teases.

"It's a nice day, though, isn't? I could stand to burn off a little adrenalin. Couldn't you?"

"Fair."

"Let's get to know each other."

"Okay. Should I start?"

"Please."

"Alright." Clarke clears her throat dramatically. "So, I once spent 72 straight hours in my studio before my senior show, and my friend, Raven, had to come and practically drag me out. I fell asleep in her car and she couldn't wake me up, so she just left me there and went to work her shift at the garage. I woke up six hours later parked outside her work."

"Okay. You win."

Clarke laughs. "I thought this wasn't a competition?"

"I was wrong. You deserve a medal."

"For my weird overshare?"

"For leading with that story. I mean, where are we supposed to go from here? Bold choice."

"I just thought I should explain that I frequently lose track of time when I'm working on my art. This outfit has less to do with my idea of appropriate first date attire and more to do with the fact that my watch is apparently an hour slow."

"Those battery powered mechanisms are a pain."

"A real menace."

"Well, _I_ look like a lumberjack's super gay cousin, _you_ look like you raided a Zumiez and fell into a bucket of paint, and _together_ there's no way we're going to eat at the swanky little cocktail bar I had in mind, even in Portland, so how about some pho instead? I know a place in the Pearl."

"I love that place."

"You don't even know which one I'm talking about."

"I do, though. Lead the way."

"Alright," Lexa slides her fingers down Clarke's arm and takes her hand, "off we go."

"Smooth."

"I exfoliate."

Clarke snorts. "Oh, really? Tell me more."

"Shall I give you a rundown of my shower routine, or…?"

"About yourself, obviously. Unless you're going to describe where you put your hands when you-"

"-Did I mention I'm a photographer?"

"You…did not. Interesting. What's your subject?"

"Anything that pays. I prefer to shoot people, though. More dynamic."

"Did you bring your camera?"

"Always." Lexa pats her leather shoulder bag.

"Perfect. Let's take a detour through the park after lunch. I've got poses I wanna stick you in."

"Okay…"

'Um, for science."

"You got it, doctor."

Clarke squeezes her hand and pulls her closer until their hips are bumping as they walk. "I think I'm gonna like you a lot more than the last guy."

Lexa glances over at Clarke's smiling face. "I think the feeling is mutual."

/ / /

 _Present Day..._

Clarke drives back into town on Thursday afternoon and texts Lexa a grinning emoji next to a heart and a pair of red lips. Attached to the message is a picture of Clarke sprawled across her own bed, eyes closed, mouth quirked, wavy blonde hair fanning out around her head on rumpled white sheets. Lexa's breath catches in her throat. Even exhausted, Clarke is stunning.

Later that evening, Lexa feeds Clarke mini pizza bagels for dinner.

"Are these locally sourced and gmo free?" Clarke asks. She suppresses a smile as she turns one over her in hand, making a show of examining it carefully.

"Shut up." Lexa bumps her shoulder. "I'm too tired to make you healthy food tonight."

"I'm not convinced you can actually cook," Clarke says wryly. "In fact, I'm pretty much convinced you live on a diet of pizza bagels."

"I love them." Lexa stuffs one in her mouth.

"Of course you do, junk food junkie."

Lexa stuffs in a second. "Ish sho good."

Clarke laughs and wrinkles her nose. "Gross, Lex."

Lexa chews and swallows. "You love them, too. Don't lie."

"They're just so bad for you. They're full of partially hydrogenated oils and msg and artificial colors-"

"-I didn't hear you complaining when I pulled them out of the freezer."

"Well," Clarke smiles and bites into a pizza bagel, "they taste pretty good with this pinot noir you picked out at the gas station."

Lexa smiles back, and they huddle up closer under an old quilt stolen off Lexa's bed. Their heads fall together as they chew. The break in conversation is comfortable, as are so many things with Clarke. Lexa stares out the living room window and watches the rain come down, falling thicker and faster as the last light of the sun wanes. Now that Clarke is home, the tremors have quieted, and the adrenalin has stopped emptying into her system by the vat. Lexa's body is heavy like lead, sinking through the ocean towards darker, murkier depths, but there are things here worth staying awake for, things worth doing for Clarke. She can tread water for a little while longer.

Clarke sips from their shared camping mug of wine and leans in to press a quick kiss to the hinge of Lexa's jaw. Her soft lips leave a damp smudge on Lexa's skin and it's all Lexa can do to hide her blush. The heat rushes everywhere, her face, her neck, her fingers, her toes. She squirms and runs her hand through her hair. She shifts her limbs and tries to readjust herself on the couch, and Clarke just grins because Clarke _knows_. Sometimes Lexa's convinced that Clarke knows _everything_ , and it's terrifying enough that she's stayed this long. There are still so many hidden depths left to plumb. There's still so much time for everything to fall apart.

"I missed you," Lexa blurts. Her voice cracks on the last syllable. She sounds entirely too desperate.

"You're fucking cute," Clarke says, grinning, nuzzling into Lexa's side. "I missed you, too."

She looks amazing in borrowed clothes, and not just because her breasts are free and straining against the front of Lexa's old gym shirt. There's a sense of ownership here. A claim that has been staked. Clarke is cuddled up on Lexa's old couch, in Lexa's messy apartment, wearing Lexa's threadbare clothes, and she's doing all of it with a soft grin and shimmering blue eyes. It makes Lexa's heart beat a whole lot faster. It makes her whole body throb.

"I...uh...um." Lexa nervously rubs the back of her neck.

"God, you kill me." Clarke throws back the rest of the wine and sets their plates aside. "Why do we even put on clothes?"

Lexa's mouth goes dry and all the heat in her body rushes between her legs, throbbing like a war drum. With Clarke around, Lexa's libido is always on a warpath. The absolute refractory period is getting shorter all the time. Clarke's hands thread into her hair, tugging at her roots, hot mouth sliding along the column of muscle straining in her neck, and Lexa whimpers.

"Don't make noises like that if you value your pants."

"Shall we burn them, or-" Clarke's teeth close around Lexa's earlobe and she gasps, hips jumping, "o-or fire them out of a cannon?"

Clarke's answering laugh is husky. "Whatever's faster."

"Okay..." A tongue slips behind Lexa's earlobe and teases along the cartilage. " _Oh_."

"Yeah."

" _Clarke.._."

"I know, babe. _Tell me_ about it."

Lexa's head lolls back and then Clarke is throwing off the blanket and shucking off her pants, muttering something nearly incomprehensible about waterloo or sex or… It's all a blur. Lexa's ears are pounding with blood anyway. Her whole body is pounding.

With Lexa's help, Clarke has them naked in a matter of seconds, and she wastes no time after that, dragging Lexa down with her on the couch until their bodies are smeared together, legs tangling, hands grasping. It's difficult to tell where Lexa ends and Clarke begins. It's best that way. Being separate people is so hard. Lexa never wants to stop. Nothing sounds worse. She'll face the demons forever if she has Clarke here to hold. She has swaddled her nerves in a cloak of electrifying infatuation, and Lexa feels ironclad.

"It's my turn," she mutters between kisses, before she's digging into Clarke's thighs and pulling.

It's a directive. It's a plea. She's not happy until Clarke's thighs are closing in around her ears, until she can lean up just barely, just a matter of inches, and slip her tongue between hot, messy folds, until Clarke groans and lurches, and Lexa has to grip Clarke's hips tight just to keep her body in position over her face. Lexa's strokes are slow, steady, and deliberate, circling top to bottom, whirling figure eights that have the blonde's chest heaving, breath stuttering. Clarke's thighs begin to tremble just as Lexa's lips trip over Clarke's clit, sucking the little swollen bundle into her mouth.

"Shit!" Clarke rocks violently, head thrown back, blissed out and agonized and incoherent.

Her hands find Lexa's hair and twist their way in, rooting themselves there, delving deeper.

Lexa grins into Clarke's cunt and twists her arm, awkwardly, until she's impaled Clarke on a long, slender finger.

"Fu- Lexa! Guh!" Clarke slides off her face, panting. "Fuck me."

Lexa sucks her finger into her mouth, savoring it, wetting it. "Mmmm. I thought that's what I was doing."

Clarke surges forward, roughly kisses her sticky mouth, and pulls away. "Three fingers," Clarke gasps, straddling Lexa's hips. "Fuck my shit up."

"Call me the pussy wrecker," Lexa replies huskily, and Clarke laughs between ragged breaths, propping one hand against her ribs to brace herself.

"Okay, pussy wrecker," Clarke teases, blue eyes flashing against mussed gold hair and pink cheeks, "wreck my fucking pussy, already."

Lexa laughs, airy and carefree and light. She feels like she's made of clouds. She could spend a whole lifetime telling bad jokes just to make Clarke's eyes sparkle like that, but demands have been made. She sucks her own fingers into her mouth again, delighting in the reaction it provokes from Clarke, whose dilated pupils watch with hawk-like intensity. The blonde traps bottom lip between her teeth and groans, hips jerking unconsciously, sliding forward, spreading a wet trail along Lexa's abdomen.

Lexa pushes herself upright on her forearms until Clarke is sitting in her lap and their faces are mere inches apart, eyes tracking, meeting, flitting between objects of desire and frustration. Clarke's legs wrap around her hips and tighten, and the pressure feels absolutely right. Absolutely good. _Clarke_ is absolutely good. Lexa fits their mouths together again and contorts her arm between their bodies, maneuvering between Clarke's legs, entering her deftly with three fingers, pushing as deep as Clarke's shuddering muscles will allow.

A languid moan unfurls in her mouth, searing lips nearly breaking away as Clarke adjusts. Her nails rake hot, stinging trails down Lexa's back. Her hips pump down hard on Lexa's hand, and stars explode behind Lexa's eyes. She's not sure who's closer to breaking. It's a contact high. It's a primeval surge of energy pulsing between them. Through their lashing tongues. Through every bit of slick skin mashed together. Lexa braces her hand on her own thighs and thrusts into Clarke with everything she has. Each undulation is rougher, faster. Clarke only grows wetter. Her muscles only squeeze tighter. She moans raggedly, until she cannot sustain their kiss any longer, and her lips slide down to Lexa's straining neck. Teeth sink into Lexa's skin and she hisses as Clarke's hands climb her body, fingers scrabbling for holds. Their movements begin to lose all semblance of rhythm

And then Clarke comes with a aching wail, and Lexa nearly tumbles over with her.

/ / /

Lately, it's been really dark in Lexa's bedroom at night. The streetlight on the corner has been out for a month and no one seems particularly bothered to fix it. Nobody seems particularly bothered about her neighborhood in general, and she's surprised that Clarke felt brave enough to park her car on the street.

They'll see in the morning whether that bravery was foolish.

"Are you in love with me?" Lexa asks.

She's tracing the curve of Clarke's back with her index finger, brushing the fine, soft hairs that grow along her spine. The tabby cat, Juniper, is asleep against her calf, and she can feel his small, quick breaths rising and falling, how much they compare to the sudden tremors that run through Clarke's body.

"I'm almost afraid to answer," Clarke whispers, turning her head, black jewel eyes roving over Lexa's face in the dark.

"I was afraid to ask."

A brief silence falls between them, and it's not quite tense, not quite uncomfortable.

"...Yes," Clarke murmurs honestly, reluctantly, voice wavering, like she's an oyster that's been cracked open in the sun, pearls exposed. "But I wasn't planning to tell you until later. It's kind of soon, right?"

Lexa's fingers still. "I knew as soon as you opened the door to the camera shop." Her hand settles softly on the small of Clarke's back, rising and falling with Clarke's breath. "So, I guess I win."

Clarke chuckles softly. "I wasn't aware this was a competition."

"The first person who falls loses."

"You're a little morbid sometimes."

"Yeah, but you love me."

The sheets rustle, and then Clarke is kissing her lips.

"I do."

* * *

 _A/N: Tell me what you liked!_

 _Got prompt ideas? Send them to me aeschylusrex on tumblr_


	4. Interlude 1: Abby

_5.6.16_

 _Two posts in two days?! Lucky ducks ;)_

 _Enjoy!_

* * *

4\. Interlude 1: Abby

 _Five Days Ago..._

Long shifts at the hospital are long, and they only feel longer the older Abby gets. By the time she's walking out the doors of Swedish Hospital, back aching, eyes burning, hobbling to her car on feet that haven't been so swollen since her pregnancy with Clarke, Abby is cursing her decision to be a doctor. Not that it's the first time. It's a battle at the end of every shift not to throw up both middle fingers and chuck her ID badge at the front desk, a miniature existential crisis, to be sure. She could retire tomorrow and move to a little bungalow in the Bahamas, and truly, money is no object, but there's a devil that drives her onward. Her conscience is her cruelest taskmaster.

At least Jake would be proud of her. Most of the time, that thought alone is enough to keep her going through the long days and quiet nights.

It's pouring down rain as she throws a coat on over her scrubs, slings her bag over her shoulder, and sets off toward the parking garage across Madison Street. The wind blows up the hill off the Sound, picking up speed between the buildings like a wind tunnel. She clutches her tumbler of coffee close against her chest, a traditional Seattle talisman to ward off the chill, her preferred protection against the elements. A sharp gust sends a volley of raindrops into her back at the crosswalk, waiting for the light to change. The wet streets are shining, black and glossy like polished obsidian shards, glowing red, yellow, and green with the cycling street lights overhead.

Abby sips her scalding hot coffee and tries not to wilt.

157 more steps until she reaches the garage. Three flights of stairs to reach her car. Two miles and twenty minutes in traffic to reach home, because Seattle traffic never sleeps, infernal and incessant, more dependable than the sunrise every morning.

"I should retire early," she murmurs to no one, dodging the glance of a sodden hobo trudging past.

"Change, ma'am?"

"I don't carry cash."

"Shame. God bless."

Abby rolls her eyes, but her irritated mutterings are interrupted by the buzzing of her phone in her pocket. She almost hesitates as she goes to answer because her eye sockets hurt, and she absolutely cannot do another shift at the hospital in this state, but it's only Clarke, toothless and towheaded in a strawberry-patterned dress, smiling up at her from the screen.

She swipes quickly.

"Clarke, honey? Light of my life?"

" _Hi, Mom._ "

A warm smile flits across Abby's lips. "Hello, my darling child. How are you?"

" _I'm at the house. Where are you? Weren't you supposed to be home four hours ago?_ "

Abby frowns and pulls the phone away from her ear, eyes widening as she checks the date on the welcome screen. The streetlight across the way changes and Abby takes off at a jog toward the parking garage.

"I'm so sorry, honey. I didn't realize what day it was. They kept me late at the hospital because Cho has the flu, and- and that's no excuse. I'm sorry."

" _You sound exhausted. I'm just gonna go ahead and order Chinese, okay?_ "

"Okay, do you need my card?"

" _No, I've got this one. No worries_."

Abby slows to a walk when she enters the garage, shaking off the rain as she pushes back her hood, wincing with each step she takes. "Are you okay, Clarke?"

" _I'm fine_."

"You sound a little flat, honey. Are you sure?"

" _Yeah, Mom, I'm fine. Just tired. The set up today was grueling_."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

" _They messed up the lighting so I had to stay late trying to fix it_." Clarke pauses and Abby waits, trudging up the concrete steps, trying not to breathe too heavily into the phone. " _Mom, there's something I- …no, never mind. Maybe we should just talk about it when I get home_."

Abby fumbles with her keys. "Okay?"

" _I'm getting a lot of food, so prepare yourself_."

Abby laughs as she climbs through the driver side door. "My body is ready."

" _Good. See you soon_."

"Bye."

Abby starts her car and flips on the radio, something loud to keep her awake while she rubs her hands together and waits for the heater to warm up. A reporter on KUOW is presenting some special on ranchers in Bozeman, Montana, interviewing a local woman who claims that ranchers aren't rednecks because rednecks don't have college degrees. Which, that's racist, or bigoted...or something, right? Abby's eyes cross and she snorts. Since when does she care who insults rednecks? After treating wounds for 27 Fourth of July fireworks disasters the previous year, Abby's of the opinion that rednecks and their camo-wearing ilk deserve any derision the Montana ranchers want to throw their way. She finishes her coffee and pulls out of the parking garage.

With the rain coming down as hard as it is, I-5 is even more snarled than usual, and weather reports are predicting a wind storm overnight, prompting local residents to clear out the shelves at the grocery stores as hoards of commuting 9-to-5ers make a mass exodus east to the suburbs before the bridges close. It takes her thirty five minutes to get home instead of her usual twenty, and Abby's head is pounding like a marching drum by the time she finally staggers through the front door into Clarke's waiting arms.

"Hi, Mom."

"Hi, honey." Abby sighs and squeezes her daughter tighter. "I missed you."

"I missed you, too." Clarke is smiling faintly as she steps away and leads Abby into the kitchen. "How was work? Sounds like they kept you busy."

Abby collapses into a chair at the kitchen table, some expensive leather-seated thing that the interior decorator had insisted they have, and props her head up in her hands. From the corner of her eye, she watches Clarke move around the kitchen, gathering plates from the cupboards and silverware from the drawer next to Jake's old fancy refrigerator, the one he claimed was superior to every other brand, the one which she still hasn't had the heart to give away even though she only ever buys enough food to fill up the first shelf. Pictures of Clarke, smiling in a graduation gown and cap, sitting at the bottom of a slide at Madison Park, balancing on a bike with two hands in the air, pepper the stainless steel refrigerator doors, and Abby can't help but notice the contrast in Clarke's demeanor now. Her shoulders are hunched, her movements awkward and lethargic. Abby knows that look. She's seen Clarke at her very worst, at the very bottom of the barrel. She'd once chased some boy named Finn out of the house with a pair of poultry scissors, no questions asked, because to her, Clarke is still seven years old, sitting at the bottom of that slide in Madison Park, and… she knows that look.

But she waits.

They're halfway through their plates, heaped with mushu pork, chow mein, and broccoli beef before Clarke raises the issue on her own. There are circles under her eyes, and she looks leaner. Abby decides she doesn't like the way Clarke's fleece hangs on her frame. She definitely doesn't like the faint translucent quality of Clarke's skin. She sees sick people all day, every day, but not her own daughter. Not in some years. This doesn't sit right.

"Mom, um…" Clarke wipes her mouth on a paper towel, always refusing to use the expensive napkins the decorator bought, and drops her chopsticks, folding her arms tight across her chest. "There's something I was wondering about."

"What's wrong, honey? You look like you haven't slept in a week."

Clarke turns her head, steel eyes staring out the rain-streaked window, and Abby knows she's just guessed at the truth. When she's playing doctor she loves to be right, but this hurts, like a screw twisting tighter in her chest. She'll take a hundred more days with swollen feet before she'll see Clarke in pain.

"I kind of haven't." She bites her lip, turns back to fix Abby with startlingly clear eyes. "Do you have a copy of the DSM-5?"

Abby blinks. "You know I do. It's on the shelf next to the medical journals in the library. Why do you ask?"

Clarke twists in her seat, twists her lip between her teeth, and Abby knows that look, too, though never worn with such obvious agony.

Something's not right.

"There's a girl," Clarke says, very quietly.

"A girl?" Abby cocks her head to the side, racing through all the information she's stored away about her only daughter, searching for the threads she'd missed. "Really?"

Clarke squirms again, but her jaw is clenched ever so slightly, and Abby can see that she's not wavering on this is. Whatever it is, it's quite serious.

"I've always been bisexual," Clarke admits. "I experimented in college a bit, but nothing really stuck."

"Well, you haven't dated much anyway." Abby runs her fingers through her hair, shaken out of a ponytail earlier that smelled of antiseptic and latex. "You've always been very focused on your work. When did you know?"

"When I was 17. Wells' friend kissed me at a party on a dare."

"Why didn't you tell us?"

Clarke shrugs. "Dad was sick."

Abby looks down at her plate. "That's true."

"It didn't seem important at the time."

"I guess that's fair." Abby sets her chopsticks aside, and devotes her full attention to Clarke, whose jaw is still tight, fingers clenching and unclenching in her lap. "So, what's her name? And what does she have to do with the DSM-5? You know that homosexuality hasn't been classified as a psychological disorder in decades."

Clarke's lips quirk. "Her name is Lexa, and she's… special."

"I can tell."

"Really?" Clarke smiles, blushing lightly, staring at her fingers in her lap. "Am I that obvious?"

"You always love with everything you have." Abby reaches out and touches Clarke's wrist, squeezing lightly. "You never do anything by half. It's one of the best things about you."

"Dad was that way, too."

"He was." Abby blinks away sudden tears. "Sometimes you remind me so much of him. You have a kind soul, Clarke."

Clarke laughs. "I don't know. I'm kind of a curmudgeon."

"Which you get from me," Abby rolls her eyes playfully, "but you care for the people you love. You give them everything you can," her voice takes on a cautionary note, "even though sometimes that means you give too much."

Clarke's hands twist together, fingers lacing, lips pursing. "I know."

Abby watches her daugher with furrowed brows for a long moment, listening to the rain strike the kitchen windows, to the branches of the evergreen trees in the backyard creaking in the wind. The storm is getting closer.

"Why is Lexa special?"

Clarke wipes her eyes. "S-she's- ...I'm sorry, i-it's just-"

Abby's chair legs squeak against the stone floor as she stands and walks around to take the seat next to Clarke. "Is she sick?"

Clarke's chin quivers as she nods.

"Clarke…" Abby scoots closer, puts her arm around her daughter's trembling shoulders. "What's wrong?"

"S-she's got some...s-some issues." Clarke sniffs and takes a shuddering breath. "Up here." She points to her temple. "She hasn't told me exactly what's wrong, but...I've been trying to figure it out."

Abby puts her physician's cap on. "What do you think it is?"

"I d-don't know." Clarke wipes her eyes on her sleeves and sniffs again indelicately. "God, I'm sorry. I'm all over the place today."

"It's okay."

"She gets panic attacks, and sometimes she can't sleep for days, and...I think there's depression, too. Maybe just anxiety and depression. Maybe bipolar II disorder, I don't know. The sleeplessness could be hypomanic episodes, I just don't-... I-I don't know. I'm not a clinician."

"You could've been."

Clarke scoffs.

"I know, I know. Sorry."

"I just wish she would let me in. She's so closed off. I think she had a rough childhood, but I'm just not sure, and I have no idea what I'm doing, or what I'm supposed to be doing. I have no idea how to support her. I just…" Clarke puts her head in her hands, says, muffled, through wet fingers, "It's just so hard sometimes, and I'm so tired."

Abby sighs and pulls her daughter close, lets Clarke lean against against her shoulder as she wipes her eyes. It's not the first time something like this has happened. There have been other boys, careless and adolescent, who have caused her daughter this kind of pain. Clarke always gives everything she has, just like Jake, ever her most adamant supporter, whispering to her that everything would be okay even as his last breath slipped away. They're really so alike, father and daughter, mirror images of each other, and Abby doesn't regret a single moment of it. She would make all the same mistakes again just to be here, holding her beautiful daughter, holding her beautiful heart to the lessen the burden for a few minutes.

"Clarke, honey," she searches for the right thing to say, draws from her own personal experience, "sometimes when people aren't well they make choices that hurt you, and it's not because they don't care. It's just that they're fighting so hard against their demons that you might accidentally get swept up in the melee."

Clarke nods against her shoulder. "I know."

"The only thing you can do is be there for her when she needs you, and it's up to her to tell you what she needs, and to accept that support or not."

"Okay."

"This Lexa, is she good to you?"

Clarke smiles. "That's funny. If you had asked me a few days ago I would've said no, but…" Her smile fades, replaced in seconds with a look of wonder, glassy-eyed and innocent, a look that Abby knows all too well. "She came back for me, and she apologized and explained… And she stayed even though she was scared."

"She loves you?"

Clarke nods. "I think so."

"And you love her?"

Clarke nods again and says the words that twist Abby's heart with their familiarity. "So much it hurts."

"Oh, Clarke."

"I've never felt like this before, Mom." Clarke smiles through her tears, through the gloom and the pitter-patter of angry raindrops and the screaming wind, through her exhaustion and her doubt, through the heavy knowledge of the battles to come. "She's just so different than anyone I've ever met. We understood each right away. It's like...with everyone else I'm speaking through interpreters, but with her we both know the same language, and it's so easy to talk to her. I want you to meet her someday."

"You haven't brought anyone home in a while."

Clarke laughs, a weak little thing, wet with tears. "I know. Maybe I'm jumping the gun on this one. It hasn't been very long."

"No, time doesn't matter. When you know, you know." Abby kisses Clarke's temple and swallows the lump settling in her throat. "And if you love her Clarke, I can't wait to meet her."

* * *

 _A/N: Thanks for reading! Tell me what you think!_

 _Wanna chat? Find me aeschylusrex on tumblr_


	5. Slice 4

_5.24.16_

 _Just an FYI that you can follow me over at AO3 under AeschylusRex. I update there more regularly._

 _Enjoy!_

* * *

 _I will beg my way into your garden_  
 _I will break my way out when it rains_  
 _Just to get back to the place where I started_  
 _So I can want you back all over again_

 _Hold on to whatever you find baby_  
 _Hold on to whatever will get you through_  
 _Hold on to whatever you find baby_  
 _I don't trust myself with loving you_

 _-John Mayer_

 **5.**

 _12 Years Ago…_

"Lexa, come outside. You've been in here all day."

Lexa scarcely has a second to react before Costia's slender fingers hook around the top of her book and rip it away, flinging it into the corner across the room. The fluttering pages shudder to a halt as the spine hits the wall and crumples to the floor, bent and battered. Costia has the audacity to look satisfied in her bikini top and white shorts.

"What the fuck?" Lexa scrambles out of her designated reading chair, eyes flashing, nostrils flaring, and squares up. "I was reading that!"

"We're at the beach!" Costia leans in and pokes her in the sternum, uncowed, fiery like her father, always spoiling for a fight. "You've been inside ignoring us since we got here!"

"So?"

"So, come outside and hang out! We're your family! We wanna see you!"

Lexa shoves her back. "You are not my family!"

"Oh, yeah," Costia rolls her pretty eyes and crosses her arms, "I almost forgot for two whole seconds that your real family is dead. Thanks so much for reminding me."

"Fuck you!"

"They're dead, Lexa! When are you gonna get over it?!"

"I shouldn't fucking have to get over it, you spoiled bitch! You don't know what kind of shit I've been through, so don't even think about getting all high and mighty on me!"

Costia grinds her teeth, and then stars explode behind Lexa's eyes and her cheek is hot and stinging, and Costia is withdrawing her hand looking angrier, more determined than Lexa's ever seen her.

"That was a mistake," Lexa snarls.

Costia just rolls her eyes, and Lexa glowers because she knows, even as the words leave her mouth, that they are empty.

She is empty.

She is apathetic, lethargic. Classic symptoms of depression is what government funded the shrink called it. She's just posturing now so that maybe Costia won't strike where it hurts. It's a useless smokescreen attempt, anyway. Costia hardly misses a beat. Dogged, vigilant, and relentless, prying into Lexa's cracks and fissures with tenacious fingers, splitting her open one crevice at a time. It won't be long until she sees too much, until she can't get away fast enough, and Lexa's tried to warn her again and again, loud and jealous like an angry child, but none of it works. None of it deflects the attention it's meant to deflect. Lexa gets the distinct impression that she'd get tired of slinging vitriol before any of it even made a dent in Costia's determination, and Lexa is just too tired to wage another war.

The American justice system was exhausting enough for a lifetime.

"You know," Costia sneers, squaring her own athletic shoulders, "while you've been busy wallowing and throwing your own little pity parties, we've been trying to help."

Lexa curls her lip. "I don't need your help."

Costia grabs the collar of her shirt and shakes her hard. "Have you looked in a mirror lately?"

Lexa's eyes flash. "You calling me ugly?"

"I'm calling you malnourished, and god, it's not for lack of food in the house. My mom always makes way too much."

"I don't like Greek food," Lexa mutters, glaring.

Costia snorts and releases her, shoving her back into the armchair. "Wow, and you think I'm spoiled? Like, listen to yourself talk sometime, Lex."

"Don't call me that."

"Maybe I have a charmed life. Fine. None of that's my fault, you know."

Lexa scoffs and looks away.

"But you're just like…" Costia growls in aggravation. "You have a family that's trying so hard to do right by you, and you can't even be bothered to come outside and say thank you."

Lexa flinches. "What the fuck for?"

"Oh, jeez, I don't know!" Costia looks incredulous, waving her arms about. "Maybe for opening our home to you? Or what about taking this vacation! My parents took this vacation for you! Because you've never been to the beach, and meanwhile, you're just sulking inside hating everything, being selfish."

"Selfish?!"

Costia scoffs at the stunned look on Lexa's face. "You don't even realize it. You're not even trying to get better. You're just running from your issues. How many kids in the foster program would actually kill to live with my family? This is a huge opportunity, Lex. Fucking take advantage of it before it's too late."

With that, Costia spins elegantly on the heels of her Tori Burch sandals and storms out, leaving Lexa stunned and silent, sprawled back on the chair with limp limbs and a slack jaw. The screen door slams in the kitchen, and Costia's footsteps thump on the patio, and then she is alone again in the house, listening to the waves crash on the beach 200 yards away.

Lexa runs her hands over her face, through her hair, folds them, fidgeting, in her lap.

Alone is good. Alone is safe. That was the decision she made after everything went south at Nia's, but then, why does she feel so shitty?

"I'm only trying to protect myself," she murmurs, frowning at her knees. "Because people suck."

But her jaw quivers. The poison truth of Costia's words is just beginning to sink in and it hurts. It settles on her bones like heavy lead. Is she really the selfish one? Broken yes, jaded yes, ruthless yes, but selfish? No one's ever called her selfish. Nia called her lazy. Roan called her stupid. Ontari called her a liar and a thief, but never selfish.

Lexa bites her lip and lets it smart, lets it sting.

Selfish.

"I'm not selfish."

She repeats it over and over again, like a mantra, like a prayer, until she's supplicating unknown powers, begging them to absolve her. All she's known in the system are hard surfaces and sharp edges, on people, on blades, on hardwood floors covered with thin camping mats and dirty blankets.

Nia's had been better.

But she had betrayed Nia.

To save herself.

Selfish.

Selfish.

Selfish.

"I'm not fucking selfish."

She's on the beach before she can think twice about it, saying it to Costia's bare, tanned back, asserting it without power or malice, without even conviction. Lexa has none of that anymore. Her hands are curling into fists. She needs Costia to agree with her. She needs Costia to absolve her.

"I'm not."

Costia turns her head toward Lexa's voice, lifting her sunglasses so that Lexa can see the way her brown eyes soften into burnt caramel under the bright, coastal sun. Her bikini is lemon yellow, and the vivid color suits her olive toned skin. Lexa's wavering stare skims across powerful, rounded shoulders and biceps, flicks over an attractive, tapering waist, the twist of muscle as Costia looks back. Her knees grow weaker. Her heart pounds in a rib cage made of glass, like any twist of pain, any contortion powerful enough will shatter it and scatter the pieces in the sand.

Costia is more powerful than anyone Lexa's ever met. More powerful than Nia. More powerful than Roan. More powerful than Damien or Murphy or Ontari.

How?

"You need to say thank you to my parents. They're worried they did something wrong." Costia lowers her sunglasses again, and the cord of tension between them loosens around Lexa's neck, lets her breathe in properly again. "If you do that, you're not selfish."

"I…" Lexa swallows and looks away, out over the golden sand and the blue ocean, the collection of rocky islands lining the coast like dark, jagged knuckles. "I will."

Costia nods once. She reaches into the cooler next to her beach towel and digs out a can of orange soda, an olive branch to extend.

"Thirsty?"

"Yeah." Lexa accepts the can, frigid against her palms, against the blistering August heat. "Thanks."

"You're welcome." Costia smiles and Lexa shivers. "Sit."

Costia scoots over and Lexa sits next to her on the beach towel, legs crossed, shoulders hunched forward, like she might be able to squash the butterflies in her stomach if she folds in on herself far enough.

"Take off your shirt."

Lexa clenches her jaw. "Okay."

She strips her tank top off over her head, straightening the modest, black bikini Mrs. Papanicolaou had purchased for her just three days earlier at the store. Lexa had moped through the whole shopping trip, and it hasn't even gotten wet yet, but, as Costia re-ties the knot at her neck Lexa is extremely glad to have it. She leans forward and digs her fingers into the hot sand until they're completely buried. Her shoulders twitch as cold suntan lotion and firm hands land on her back.

"So, how do you like Cannon Beach?"

Costia's hands slip under the band of her swim suit.

Lexa's eyes slip closed.

"It's really nice."

"Right? Thanks for giving my parents the idea."

"Sure."

"Thanks for coming outside, too. I know you didn't want you."

Lexa just smiles.

"I know you're still hurting, Lex, even though I said all that stuff in there."

"It's okay. We don't have to talk about it."

Costia hums and spends a quiet minute meticulously rubbing the suntan lotion into Lexa's deltoids. Lexa bites her lip to keep herself quiet. She bites harder when Costia's fingers swirl around the base of her neck.

"We spent a few days at Newport Beach in California once." Costia reaches for the bottle again and squirts more sunblock into her palm. "I got to body surf, and the water was a lot warmer, but this is probably still one of my favorite beaches."

Cold lotion lands against her lower back, and Lexa shudders. "Have you ever been to Greece? Like, to see your relatives or anything? I hear they have amazing beaches."

"My parents are taking me after I graduate. I bet they'll make you come with us."

"Maybe."

"They totally will."

Lexa sighs against her knee caps and tries to enjoy the moment for what it is, no illusions, no aspirations.

"We'll see what happens," she says, and Costia, mercifully, lets the subject drop.

/ / /

 _Present Day…_

 _Lexa -_

 _It's very good to hear from you again. I'm sorry to hear about your job situation, but you're a resourceful young woman, so I know you will figure something out._

 _I would be happy to help with your friend. I'm attaching a copy of my calendar for the next month so you know my availability._

 _I look forward to seeing you soon._

 _Be safe,_

 _Indra_

/ / /

Clarke, like Lexa, proves that she has a grown-up collection of habits and defenses all her own. Her studio is one of them. She retreats there sometimes when life threatens to overwhelm her, when the deadlines creep up and the client calls become almost relentless. Lexa hasn't known Clarke very long, but Clarke is a creature of habit, and, by now, Lexa knows the signs. She will toss and turn, keep Lexa up half the night grumbling under her breath, and then lumber off at the break of day like a grumpy bear, seeking out her cave for a short period of artistic hibernation.

It's healthy. At least Lexa thinks it's healthy. After all, she's hardly one to say what is or isn't mentally sound.

Maybe when she can keep a job she'll start throwing stones.

"In here."

Clarke leads her down a wide, concrete corridor with fluorescent lighting and padlocked metal doors on rusted metal tracks. Some of the doors, which reach from floor to ceiling, have been rolled back, and Lexa can hear music spilling out from the spaces as they pass, blending together in the hallway to form a tolerable cacophony with the erratic clatter of metal tools and lilting notes of disembodied voices. It's haunting and eerie, the kind of place Lexa might have once made a drug run, except that the signs of gentrification are already creeping in, splashes of paint on the floor, vegan bumper stickers and Bernie Sanders posters plastered on one of the walls.

Lexa hears grimey gangster rap banging from one unit as she passes and Clarke swivels around to share an exasperated eye roll with her.

"Aaron," she says under her breath. "Whitest, most pretentious guy you'll ever meet. Listens to nothing but underground hip-hop while he works."

"What does he make?"

"He's a painter, like me, but he works in surrealism and impressionism. His latest work was a bit pastoral."

Lexa arches a brow. "Gritty."

Clarke's smirk grows, and the glint her eye, the dangerous flicker that leaves Lexa winded every time, steals her breath again.

"The grittiest," she says, husky and delighted, reveling in the private joke they've shared.

Lexa slides a finger under her collar and lifts the fabric away from her flushed skin. She's an embarrassment to cool kids everywhere. Her mind wanders wantonly, helplessly. She wonders if Clarke has ever fucked anyone in her studio, wonders if she'd like to add that notch to her bedpost, and immediately quashes the thought. Honestly, she's like a dog in heat. So embarrassing.

"This is it." Clarke stops at the end of the corridor and gestures to the corner unit, a plain metal door with her name, typed on beige cardstock, resting in the plastic title holder on the adjacent wall. "Home sweet home."

"This confirms my suspicions that you actually live here," Lexa says, watching as Clarke produces a key ring from her pocket and unlocks the heavy padlock on the lever style handle.

"Alas, you've figure me out." Clarke wrenches back the handle and braces herself, arms straining until the heavy metal door groans and begins to shift. "My other apartment is just a front for my nefarious drug smuggling ring."

Lexa tenses a little, reminds herself to relax. "How unoriginal."

"You say unoriginal, I say classic." The metal door shudders over a rusted patch and rolls to a stop. "Come in."

Clarke beckons, disappearing through a small gap, and Lexa slips in after her, taking care to roll the heavy door closed behind her. When she turns, Clarke is standing in the middle of the modest space, looking at her funny.

"What'd you do that for?"

Lexa peers around at the walls, two red brick, two white concrete, feigning nonchalance. "Have you ever had sex in your studio before?"

Clarke snorts. "Not this one."

She turns and stalks through a minefield of pain cans, wadded drop cloths, sketchpads, and plastic trays, picking her way to the far wall where two easels are set up. Lexa watches her move for a moment, marveling at her balance and grace amidst a minefield of hazards, and then begins to notice the stacks of finished canvases leaned up against the wall to her right. They are, quite literally, all shapes and sizes, some as small as her face, others taller and wider than her whole body. She twists her neck and sees that Clarke keeps blank canvases on the rear wall, beyond the metal track for the door.

"I thought it would be larger, the way you talked about it." Lexa turns in a slow circle. "It's a little claustrophobic in here."

Clarke, who has reached the original eight foot factory windows on the far side, reaches for a brass lever and cracks one of the short, bottom panes open. "It's only because I'm trying to get ready for my show." She peers over her shoulder at the mess in the center of the room. "It's a disaster in here. Watch your step."

Lexa wanders over to the left wall and eyes the cot pushed up against the wall, stacked with blankets and other odds and ends. Beside it, a stubby white refrigerator, covered in a light mist of red spray paint, hums quietly. The space is well lit. Natural light streams in from outside, silver and muted like the clouds overhead, but there are lamps everywhere, on stands, on stools. Clarke, for some reason, has many stools. Lexa leans against the refrigerator and takes it all in.

"Who's your inspiration?"

Clarke hugs herself, head tilting to the side in front of her twin canvases. "Joel Shapiro."

"The colorful blocks guy?"

Clarke whirls around. "How do you know him?"

"I took art history in college."

"And you remember that?"

Lexa rubs the back of her neck. "I'm pretty smart when I'm not crazy."

Clarke's blue gaze is unwavering for a moment, piercing, searching, nearly surgical in its intensity. "You're some kind of secret genius, I swear."

"It's the oldest cliche in the book. The brilliant insane person."

"Yeah," Clarke absently strokes her chin, and the sight of it would be a bit pretentious, a bit comical, except that Lexa's completely in love with Clarke in her element. "There's a lot of that in the art world."

"True."

"I would give my left buttcheek to see whatever trippy things Van Gogh saw."

"I wouldn't."

Clarke laughs. "Right."

"Your butt's too cute to be lopsided." Lexa shrugs helplessly. "It's a bad trade."

"Well, you know what they say, one man's buttcheek is-"

"-Don't you mean one man's ear?"

Clarke rolls her eyes to the ceiling. "Dear Lord in Heaven, please save me from these terrible jokes."

Lexa laughs. "Whatever. Talk to me about your art, Griffin."

Clarke smiles and beckons Lexa over, bending down quickly to clear a path through the art supplies and detritus littering the floor.

"These don't look like Joel Shapiro to me," Lexa says, approaching the twin canvases.

The telltale white space is there, but instead of overlapping blocks of primary colors, Clarke has opted for aggressive brushstrokes of black, magenta, deep purple, and blue. The effect is mesmerizing and beautiful, like sheets of colored tissue paper torn and layered to form captivating blends, rough edges, and dramatic, high contrast interplay between the black and white spaces. Truth be told, the canvases look much more cosmic than anything she's seen of Joel Shapiro's work.

"He did plenty of stuff on paper, too. Not just sculptures. Google it later."

Lexa hums under her breath, eyes tracing and retracing, committing the details of Clarke's creative impulses to memory. "What do they represent?"

"Minds," Clarke replies simply, and pulls up a stool to sit on.

"Minds? I don't follow."

"Each canvas is the profile of a mind."

"Of people you know? Or yourself?"

"Both." Clarke smiles faintly. "In a manner of speaking."

Lexa steps up to Clarke's side, gaze falling to the golden hairs curled at the nape of Clarke's neck. "One of them's mine, isn't it?"

"Hah. Don't flatter yourself."

Lexa's eyes scan between them, calculating. She points to the canvas whose top half is laden with heavy, scraping strokes of black, almost suffocating in their intensity.

"Is that one mine?"

Clarke turns and studies her for a long moment, face unreadable, eyes unfathomable.

"No," she says slowly, after a beat. "It's actually that one."

She points to the canvas on the left side where the dark is noticeably less conspicuous and the colors are so vivid that they almost burst from the white canvas.

"That one?" Lexa shakes her head. "Really?"

Clarke nods.

"And the other one. Is that...you?"

Clarke's fingers lace together on her knees, and she peers off at the painting silently for a minute. "Yeah."

"That doesn't seem right." Lexa's hand brushes the base of Clarke's spine. "They should be switched, shouldn't they?"

Clarke shakes her head. "That's how you look to me, Lex. It's a study in perspective. How we see ourselves versus how we see others." She licks her lips. "To me you are bright and beautiful and bursting with color, but in my own mind I am aware of my anxieties, my insecurities, my doubts. It makes sense that you see yourself in the darker portrait."

"You're like the sun to me," Lexa says easily, and Clarke glances over her shoulder to catch her eyes, so fragile, so unsure that Lexa is leaning down to kiss the hinge of her jaw on impulse. "I only see the colors when I look at you."

Clarke smiles wanly, says, "perspective is a funny thing, huh?" and turns her head back toward the paintings.

The room descends into a contemplative silence.

After long a minute, Clarke sighs and shifts on her stool. "At some point, I hope you can stand to see the darkness, too."

Lexa reaches for her hand.

/ / /

 _Indra -_

 _Thanks for responding to me so quickly. I printed out your schedule and put it on my fridge so I won't forget. (You know how I am.)_

 _My cell number is still same if you need to reach me. I promise I'll pick up this time._

 _Look forward to hearing from you soon,_

 _Lexa_

/ / /

"We're not accepting applications right now."

Lexa glares at the bearded, heavyset man behind the counter. There's a mocha stain on his green apron next to the round, siren logo, and some splatters of what must be milk over the pockets along his bulging waist. Not that she's walking around town in a tuxedo, but he is way too dumpy to be judging her outfit.

"This is Starbucks," she replies, arching a brow. "You're always accepting applications."

Beardo- 'John' his metal name tag reads- rolls his eyes. "Do you even know anything about coffee?"

"Do I have to? Again, this is Starbucks."

"Look, lady," John grips his Sharpie tighter in his meaty fist, "we're all staffed up. Maybe try a different location."

"But this one is close. I can't walk to the other locations."

"Then ride a bike, take the bus. I don't care. We're not accepting applications right now."

"Fine, fine." She starts to turn, fingers sliding over the composite marble countertop, when a sudden, rather immature impulse gets the better of her. "I would've been the best barista this dump has ever seen, but whatever. Your loss."

John's whole face is turning red now, and Lexa is trying not to worry about that age-old adage of burning bridges. She's enjoying his irritation entirely too much to let it lie. The only person that gets to talk down to her is Anya.

"Please go be the best somewhere else," John grits, struggling to control his tone.

Lexa opens her mouth ready to fire back another obnoxious retort, but her phone buzzes in her pocket and derails her train of thought.

"I think I will." She turns on her heel and strides toward the door. "Later Beardo!"

She only catches the start of his furious spluttering as the door to the cafe closes behind her, and then she is standing outside in the sun, peering at an unknown number on her screen. Lexa pauses. She doesn't accept unknown calls anymore, not since Ontari got into the habit of making death threats from payphones. Never mind that it's been years.

The phone stills in her hand and Lexa breathes a sigh of relief. One less thing to worry about then.

Until it begins to ring again.

"Damnit."

She looks around at the traffic on MLK, at the agitated cyclist arguing with a Prius driver at a red light up the block, at the woman head banging in her bumper-stickered Subaru, at the tattooed couple carrying a baby with pink pigtails toward the bus stop. She looks around for an answer, for an excuse to put this little annoyance out of her head. She's tired and she's anxious, and she's trying to hold it all together long enough to find a source of steady income, but the phone keeps ringing, and something in the back of her mind, something nagging, won't let her just silence it.

When the phone begins to ring again for the third time, Lexa huffs and answers it.

"Hello?"

" _Jesus christ, woman. You couldn't answer your phone a little fuckin' faster_?"

Lexa freezes in the middle of the sidewalk. "Aden?"

" _You told me to call if I needed anything, remember_?"

"Yes. Yes!" Lexa springs into action, jogging toward her car, fumbling through her bag for the keys. "Where are you?"

" _It's not important_." Aden pauses, and Lexa hears the telltale click of a lighter, the quick inhale carrying through the line. " _I just need a little favor_."

"Look," Lexa climbs into the driver side door of her little green hatchback, "when I said to call me, I kinda meant it like in an emergency. If you just need another sandwich-"

"- _Fuck you, I don't need another goddamn sandwich._ "

Lexa sticks her keys in the ignition, turns hard, and cranks the heater up to full blast. "Okay, so…"

" _I need a place to stay_."

"Oh."

" _Oh? That's all you got_?"

"It's just," Lexa runs her fingers through her hair, wonders briefly if she remembered to change into a clean shirt under her ratty sweatshirt, and then puts it out of her mind, "I wasn't expecting to get this call so soon."

" _Okay?_ " Aden sounds irritated, but Lexa hears a note of something else there, realizes that it's irritation inspired by panic. " _Do you have a place to stay or not_?"

"I just figured it would take you a lot longer to call me."

" _What's that supposed to mean_?"

"It means I'm not totally prepared...but it's fine! It's fine. Tell me where you are. I'll come get you."

" _You can't come here._ "

"Why not?"

" _Never mind why_."

Lexa catches sight of her eyes in the rearview mirror, notes the telltale squint and the furrowed brow. She looks like a worried parent. She looks like her mom. It's probably time to act like one. To pretend to act like one, at least.

"Aden," she says, calmly, firmly, "you have to tell me where you are or I won't let you stay with me."

Aden hisses something venomous and indecipherable through the phone. " _I can't-_ "

"-If you wanna stay with me, you've gotta tell me the truth."

" _Oh my god, Lexa, listen to me. You can't come here. I don't want these guys to see you_."

"I don't care who sees me."

" _Lexa, shut the fuck up and listen to me_." Aden lowers his voice, words muffled like he's covering the receiver. " _These guys know you_."

Lexa squints through her windshield at the patchy bushes lining the parking lot. "What? How?"

" _Does the name Nia ring a bell_?"

The phone nearly slips from her hand. "Shit."

" _Yeah. So, see, you can't come here_."

Right. No, she can't.

"Fuck." She pauses to stare vacantly at her odometer. "Fuck fuck fuck."

Lexa swallows and leans her forehead against the steering wheel, takes quick, shallow breaths, promises herself she's not dying as her heart rate doubles, as it pounds harder and harder, until her whole body is pulsing with it, until her brain is shaking in her skull and she can't think about anything except stumbling out of the car and screaming into the pavement. Hot tears blur her vision. Vibrations run up her arms, down her legs, into her fingers and toes, into her chattering teeth. It's a full blown panic attack in the parking lot of a shitty Starbucks.

Even with so much distance, so much time, so much space, there is still so much power in that name. It's not fair. Lexa wants to cry, wants to sob, wants to throw herself off the Burnside Bridge. The nightmares and the lingering threats, double-checking over her shoulder, dodging glances on the street, it can't start up again. She can't live like that again.

" _Lexa_?"

"Aden," she presses her fingers into her eye sockets, "how do you know Nia?"

" _I should be asking you that question_."

"God, Aden, stay the hell away from her. Stay away from anyone associated with her."

" _I fuckin' know that, genius. That's why I need someplace to crash. I can't camp under the bridge anymore_."

"Okay, okay." Lexa leans back in her seat, eyes closed, breathing. "I know."

" _Are you okay_?"

"No." Lexa sucks in a shuddering breath and digs her fingernails into her collarbone until the pain is stronger than the panic. "Aden, listen, go to the Crown Plaza Hotel on MLK and wait for me there. I need to make some calls."

" _I can't just stay with you_?"

"No. If you're mixed up with Nia, then no you can't."

" _What the hell did you do to these people_?"

"It's ancient history." Lexa pinches the bridge of her nose. "I'll explain everything later."

" _Okay fine._ " Aden sighs. " _I'll be on the next bus._ "

"Hey, one more thing."

" _What_?"

"Whose phone are you using?"

" _It's mine now. I stole it off some guy. Beaned him with a fuckin' wine bottle if you can believe that_."

"Wow."

" _It's prepaid. No worries._ "

"Just please be careful, and make sure you aren't followed."

" _Duh. I'll call you when I get to the hotel_."

"Okay."

Lexa hangs up, takes a long, stabilizing breath, and immediately dials another number, fingers shaking so badly that she mis-punches twice. She curses loudly when the line beeps and goes to voicemail.

"Indra, we have a problem," Lexa chews her lip, "the boy I told you about, I think he's mixed up with Nia somehow…" She pauses, reaches out for more words, any words to describe the dread that's coiling tight around her abdomen, but nothing comes. "...Please just call me as soon as you get this."

/ / /

 _15 Years Ago…_

It's a job, not a home.

Lexa realizes that quickly, less than thirty minutes after the social worker has rolled away from the curb. The cozy bedrooms, the homey kitchen, the happy photos on the fridge, it's all a lie, a cover for Nia's real business, stacked away in black plastic storage bins in the basement.

At first, she's too young to understand what's going on. Nia is carrying on about Lexa's "role in the family", using harsh, clipped tones, and it's all too jarring. The bruises from her last home are still fresh on her arms. Lexa is wavering on her feet, focus slipping in and out. She's not sure when she hits the deck, but Nia isn't there to catch her.

She wakes up on the couch in the living room. There's a boy sitting next to her. Much older. Maybe college aged, she guesses, from the stubble on his cheeks.

"She needs to go bed," he says, turning to look at Nia.

"No, good girls get to sleep in a bed. Bad girls get to sleep on the basement floor." Nia catches her eye and holds it. "Understand me?"

Lexa's chin quivers, but Nia's hard gaze doesn't falter. After a long beat, Lexa finally catches on and nods.

"Good. Take your pillow," Nia shoves the thin, lumpy pillow into her hands, "and your sleeping bag," she kicks the roll with her boot, "and go get comfortable. We'll talk about my expectations again in the morning."

Lexa descends the creaky stairs with a lump in her throat. The basement is dark and the concrete floors are cold and hard. She tries not to think about spiders or hospital beds or car accidents. She tries not to think about the dark or her parents or her brother.

She tries not to think at all.

Tries.

/ / /

 _Present Day…_

She finds Aden outside the seedy hotel, tucked away with his pack behind a scraggly potted shrub. Lexa's heart jumps when she first sees him, glaring at the pavement with downturned lips and a bright purple shiner on his right eye. His hair is matted with blood. His breathing is a little labored. His skin is a sallow greenish color.

Lexa blinks back her dread and crouches down in front of him, catching his attention.

"Hey."

He turns his head cautiously, but there's a flicker of relief in his gaze, passing through his eyes like lightning. Up close, Lexa can see the bruising around his throat.

"...They tried to kick me off the property," he hooks his thumb at the door, voice rough, "until I told them I was waiting for you."

Lexa swallows the lump in her throat. "They believed you?"

He grimaces. "Sort of. I decided to stay out of their line of sight anyway. Jus' in case."

She nods and sets her jaw, squints into the clear blue sky, searching for strength. "Good idea." Lexa climbs to her feet. "I'm going to go in a get a room for a couple nights. It's all I can really afford right now, sorry."

Aden shrugs and winces. "That's fine. Thanks."

She gets him a room on the third floor and leads him up the stairs, avoiding the cameras in the elevator. She's not sure if she's being paranoid and she doesn't care. She's lasted this long being a weirdo, and that's all that matters.

Aden wants to flop into bed straightaway, but Lexa makes him shower, and dials Indra's office number this time, leaving a voicemail with an address and a room number, the barest details. She'll never know who's on the inside feeding information outside. Better safe than sorry.

Aden's still in the shower half an hour later when her phone rings. Lexa answers without looking.

"Indra?"

" _Um, Clarke, actually. Your hot girlfriend_?"

"Oh." Lexa exhales and tries not to sound disappointed.

" _We were supposed to meet for lunch, remember? Where are you?_ "

Lexa curses under her breath and runs her fingers through her hair. Had she not set a notification on her phone? Too caught up in this crisis to tell Clarke.

"Um," Lexa rubs a hand over her face, "something came up."

" _Something came up_." Clarke does not sound impressed.

"Yeah, um." Lexa fumbles, fumbles with her choices, to tell, to withhold, to protect, to trust. "Kind of an emergency."

" _Kind of an emergency_."

"Okay, actually an emergency."

" _Lexa_?" Clarke sounds worried now. " _What's going on? Where are you_?"

"It's- I've got it under control now. It's okay."

"... _If you don't tell me what's going on in the next thirty seconds I'm calling Anya_."

"What?" Lexa frowns. "How did you get her number?"

" _Good old fashioned espionage. Now, are you gonna tell me or not_?"

"You went through my phone?!"

Clarke huffs over the line. " _Facebook, Lexa. I sent her a message. I thought I should have an emergency contact for you just in case, and since you're so private_ -"

"-You had no right to do that." Lexa clenches her jaw as Aden emerges from the bathroom in a towel, eyeing her suspiciously.

She tosses him the clean t-shirt she stopped to buy him on the way over, and turns away toward the wall.

" _What else was I supposed to do_? _What if you get hurt_?"

"Clarke, you're messing with stuff you don't understand. You can't get Anya involved in this, okay?"

" _What is going on? Lexa_ -"

"You have to just trust me on this. Do you trust me?"

Clarke hesitates. " _No_ ," she decides, " _not particularly_."

A pained gasp escapes Lexa's lips. It's one thing to believe it and another thing to hear it. Clarke's words wound. Clarke's words cut deep.

Selfish.

"I'm not selfish," she whispers.

" _What_?"

"Never mind."

" _Look_ ," Clarke begins to backpedal, " _it's that I don't trust you per se. It's more that I don't trust you to ask for help when you need it._ "

"I'm fine, Clarke."

" _I just don't… are you sure_?"

"Listen, there's something going on that I can't talk about right now. It's a long story, but just… I'm with Aden, okay?"

" _Lexa_ -"

"I'll call you later, okay? I can't talk now."

" _Lexa, wait_ -"

She swipes to hang up the call before she can think better of it, puts her phone on silent, and swivels to find Aden staring at her. He's shaved away the old stubble and changed into clean clothes, and Lexa is proud to find that he's actually quite handsome underneath all the grit. He's lanky, skinnier than she had hoped, but his musculature is good. He'll be strong one day, if he stays off the streets.

"What?" she asks, crossing her arms defensively. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

Aden narrows his eyes. "Was that your girlfriend just now?"

Lexa's shoulders stiffen. "Maybe."

He wanders over to the bed and flops down. "She's gonna be pissed at you."

Lexa sits down on the hard chair in the corner. "Yeah," she sighs heavily, "she probably already is."

"You're kinda terrible to her." Aden rolls on his back and laces his hands together over his stomach, cautious of what Lexa suspects are cracked ribs. "I only talked to her that one day, but Clarke's a cool chick. What'd you do to deserve her?"

Lexa pulls her knees up to her chest and wraps her arms around them. "I'm pretty charming when I want to be."

"Treat her better or someone'll steal her away."

Lexa frowns. "What would you know about it, hobo Joe?"

Aden smirks, chapped lips stretching into a smile that looks almost ghoulish with his black eye. "I know you'll really fuckin' regret it if you lose her."

Lexa sucks in a sharp breath and lets her forehead fall against her knees. Aden says nothing else and it's worse that way because there's nothing left to add. It's absolutely the truth. She knows it. What the hell is she doing? Why does she always do this? Why is she so hopeless? Who could possibly love her when she's like this.

"I'll only hurt her," Lexa whispers.

Aden hums. "If you want to, yeah, you will."

"What?" Lexa glances up, glares. "It's not like I want to."

"Look, if you don't wanna hurt her, then don't."

"It's not that simple."

"It is that simple." Aden closes his eyes. "It's a choice. Decide you're not going to hurt her. Do the right thing. It's not rocket science."

"Maybe not to a teenager, but the real world isn't binary like that. It's never just one thing or the other."

Aden wrinkles his brow. "Yeah? Well, fuck you. Sometimes it is that simple. Stop makin' everything so goddamn complicated. You're torturin' yourself over shit that doesn't matter."

Lexa hugs her legs tighter. "Whatever. Go to sleep."

"You gonna stay here?"

"I'm waiting for Indra."

"Who the fuck is Indra?"

"An old friend of mine."

Aden cocks an eye open. "An old friend, huh?"

Lexa purses her lips. "You ask too many questions."

"Well, you're too frickin' secretive. Like, what the hell? Answer a question once in awhile, okay?"

"I answer plenty of questions."

Aden snorts and closes his eyes again. "Not the ones that count. I bet Clarke would agree with me."

Lexa furrows her brow and stares at the stale carpet, studies the garish, dated design with disinterest. It's not like she doesn't try to be more open… Or maybe she doesn't. Lexa sighs and lays her cheek flat against her knee. It's not her fault. Her world was nothing but secrets and danger for years, and the moment someone convinced her to let her guard down everything went to hell. Is she scared or is she protective? Why does there have to be a distinction between those things? The answer, in her case, is obviously both.

"I'm just trying to protect you," Lexa mutters. "There are bad people out there."

For a long moment Aden doesn't respond, narrow chest rising and falling evenly like he's asleep, and Lexa's mind wanders away. The old heating unit rattles faintly behind her. A tv in the next room drones. Voices carry down the hall, growing louder and then fainter as they pass.

"...It's not like I have any answers," he says, at length, startling Lexa out of her troubled thoughts. "I live- lived under a bridge and my family is broken beyond repair, but I know just looking at you that you're exhausted all the time."

Lexa shrugs further into her sweatshirt. "It's whatever. I can handle it."

"Sure. We all can, right? Nobody ever needs no fuckin' help from nobody."

Lexa squirms uncomfortably in her chair. "I mean… I dunno."

"You made a decision to be alone for reasons I don't understand, and I've got my own secrets, too, so I gotta respect that, but, Lexa," Aden opens his eyes, large and almost owlish in his sunken face, "if you're gonna fuck with Clarke you gotta give her the information, you know? Like, I know you're scared, but that's just how it works. If you wanna be alone, go all maverick and shit, you can't have relationships with people, because they care, and they wanna know. They wanna help. You just hurt them by not confiding in them."

"So…" Lexa gnaws on her lip. "You're telling me to break up with Clarke."

Aden heaves a dry laugh and drags a bony forearm across his eyes. "Shit, dude… no. You're not hearing me."

Lexa glares across the room. "Well, maybe if you'd been a little more clear-"

"-Like shit, why are you in such a rush to break up with Clarke?"

"I'm not."

"You're like, fuckin' eager though." Aden chuckles darkly to himself. "It's like...dude, it's like you'll take any excuse you can get to break it off, but why?" He turns to look at her, dull eyes blinking open again. "I can tell you love her, so what the hell are you doin'?"

Lexa's face falls and she twists her lip between her teeth, and suddenly her mouth is a dam holding back a river of reasons fighting to escape.

Maybe it's better to just start at the beginning.

"You wanted to know how I know Nia?" she asks in monotone, expression pained.

Aden pushes himself up on his forearms. "Yeah?"

"I ran drugs for her."

He sits up fully. "Are you kidding me? When?"

"Over a decade ago." Lexa's tongue flicks between her teeth. "I guess you could say I was sort of...pressed into service."

Aden just looks at her in awe for a moment while Lexa fidgets with the hole forming in her sleeve. It's getting bigger lately, and soon it'll be big enough to ruin the cuff. She wonders, idly, if Clarke knows how to sew.

Clarke.

Lexa grits her teeth and presses on.

"Nia was able to get to me, even from prison. She had loyal underlings who were willing to hurt the people I loved on her behalf. Just to get back at me. So," Lexa takes a shaky breath, "naturally, I worry about Clarke getting involved."

"You don't want those people to know about her," Aden realizes.

"Exactly."

"Well, shit. I get it."

"Aden, where were you when I called?"

He shifts a bit, looking distinctly uncomfortable. "Promise you won't be mad."

"I can't promise that ahead of time."

He shifts again, eyes darting away. "I was at a pick up site."

Lexa's eyebrows rise. "You're using."

"Kinda," he shrugs, "it takes off the edge sometimes."

"No one kinda uses that crap, Aden."

Lexa springs out of her chair and crosses the room in a flash, seizing his left arm by the wrist and lifting it into the light. He protests, tries to jerk his arm away for a moment, but Lexa twists until he yelps, and he goes still.

"There are faint track marks here." She pauses. "Heroin?"

"A bit."

"A bit?"

"I can't usually afford it."

"So, what were you trying to score?"

Aden winces. "Heroin. But look, I didn't have the cash they wanted. They upped the price and tried to hustle me for more. This one guy, they kept calling him Murphy, he turned out my pockets and found the piece of paper with your name and number on it."

Lexa pales. She drops Aden's hand like it's made of fire and stumbles backward until her back hits the wall. Startled, Aden rubs his wrist and gawks at her, eyes widening with the realization that he has accidentally unearthed a skeleton from her past.

Her next words are very quiet. "What did you tell him?"

"Nothing," Aden frowns, "I hit him over the head with a wine bottle, he dropped his phone, and I picked it up and hauled ass outta there."

"That's Murphy's phone?" Lexa's eyes flash bright with panic, mouth falling open in horror, and then she's rushing to the bed and dragging Aden up by both wrists. "Where the fuck is it?!

"I-In my pack, I think!"

Lexa shakes him hard, until Aden is biting back a yelp of pain. "Go get it! Get it right fucking now!"

She releases him and Aden scrambles to his pack on the floor next to the scuffed up dresser. He digs through the pockets with unsteady hands as she paces the room, muttering to herself, incoherently, mussing up her hair, bunching it between her fists, tugging and pulling, until she comes to an abrupt stop, covering her eyes with both hands in the middle of the room. She remains frozen there until Aden produces the phone.

"Got it."

Lexa turns to him and her eyes are wild. Her chest is burning. Dread burns like dry ice under her skin.

"Fill the bathtub with water and throw it in."

"What? But-"

"I'll buy you a new fucking phone, Aden! They might be tracking that one!"

His eyes widen, and then he's hurrying to comply, jogging into the bathroom and wrenching on the faucet.

Lexa tips back her head and blinks up at the ceiling, searching for the calm that she can't seem to find. She knows what they need to do, knows that they need to move, but if the hotel is being watched already it won't matter. It might be too late already. And oh god, if it is…

Clarke…

Clarke doesn't know.

Lexa puts her head into her hands.

Clarke doesn't know.

A sudden knock at the door nearly startles her so badly that she actually jumps. Three knocks, heavy-handed and evenly spaced, Aden's head pops out of the bathroom, but Lexa puts a finger to her lips, waving him away, urging him to be quiet. Cautiously, with light steps and a hammering heart, Lexa creeps to the front door and puts her eye to the peep hole.

And then...oh.

It's just Indra.

Lexa reaches for the handle and pulls it open, nearly collapsing against the wall with relief as Indra's stern features come into view.

"Indra…"

"You are in a lot of trouble, young lady." Indra steps inside, pushing Lexa back with a firm hand, slamming the door shut behind her. "What have you gotten yourself into?"

Lexa glances nervously over her shoulder as Aden cautiously pokes his head out of the bathroom again.

"Um, I can explain."

"You had better start," Indra says imperiously, "because I am missing dinner with my husband for this."

She catches sight of Aden and immediately smiles, crisp and warm, like she used to do for Lexa when she was still in her charge. "Hello, there. You must be Aden."

He steps out fully into the room and stands awkwardly with hunched shoulders and folded arms. "Yeah. Nice to meet you…?"

"Indra." She smiles at him again in a perfunctory manner before turning back to Lexa with a scowl. "Now explain yourself, Lexa. Why are you hiding out in a dirty hotel room?"

"It's a long story." Lexa's eyes dart to Aden. "You had better sit down."


	6. Slice 5

_5.24.16_

 _Sup guys? For those of you not already following me on tumblr (at aeschylusrex), I just posted a link to a playlist I made for this story on 8tracks. If you're interested mosey on over and check it out! :D_

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 _Okay, enough bulletins already~_

 _Enjoy!_

* * *

 **6\. Slice 5**

 _14 Years Ago_ …

Lexa's math book sits open on the bedspread, illuminated by the tiny desk lamp clipped to the wooden beam at the end of her bunk. She taps a pencil against her knee and chews her lip, but her mind is elsewhere. It's a gloomy Sunday afternoon and she's been staring out the window for twenty minutes, ignoring her algebra homework. She'd rather be under the covers catching up on much needed sleep, but Nia won't settle for failing grades, won't settle for anything less than average, anything that will draw attention to their unique family situation. There are harsh punishments in place to prevent any of them from slipping out of the appearance of normalcy.

Frankly, there are harsh punishments for a lot of things.

Lexa sighs and turns her gaze back to the unsolved problem in the book.

 _11 + 5x + 2(x - 5) = 8_

She taps her pencil against the page of her notebook, scattering the tiny, grey eraser curls left from her frustration with the previous problem. She licks her lips and lifts her eyebrow with a thumb. The graphite leaves thin lines on the paper as she taps. Finally, fighting against great inertia, Lexa lifts her hands and scribbles "24)" in the margin.

Two more to go, and then sleep.

She's subtracting 11 from both sides when Nia's voice carries in from the kitchen, sharp and critical, lambasting someone for screwing something up. She listens with half an ear, loses interest, and tries to tune it out. Sleep is beckoning, but then the door of the bedroom is flung open, brass knob striking the wall, and Ontari storms in with a face full of thunder.

Her brown eyes look nearly black.

"Fucking bullshit!" she screams.

In the kitchen, Nia's voice gets louder, shriller. Lexa glances up reluctantly from her work as Ontari rips off her black raincoat, wads it up, and throws it at the dresser. She's soaked through, wet tendrils of dark brown hair sticking to her forehead and her cheeks. Her black Doc Martens come off next, chucked into the corner with two wall-shuddering thumps, splashing mud and pine needles everywhere. She strips down into her underwear, fuming, spitting curses under her breath as she drags out fresh clothes to wear. All black of course.

"What happened?" Lexa asks, tentatively. She's not sure she really wants to know.

Ontari whirls on her. "None of your fucking business, bitch!"

The old floorboards creak in the hallway, and Roan appears in the doorway a second later, jaw set, expression grim, muscular arms bulging out of the sleeves of his layered, pop-collared polos. His tawny brown hair has finally grown long enough to pull back into a tight bun at the back of his head, and he's sporting a fresh pair of diamond studs in each ear.

"Were you followed?" His voice is tight, clipped.

Ontari pulls her shirt on over her head and drags a hand through her hair. "No. That punk bitch decked Murphy and ran off with our shit."

Roan looks unimpressed. "How do you know he didn't have accomplices?"

"Because I fucking checked." Ontari shimmies into a pair of skintight black jeans. "Because I'm not a fucking idiot like Murphy."

Roan folds his arms across his chest, eyes narrowed. "How do I know you two didn't pull a fast one on us? Try to skim off our operation?"

Ontari spins around with incredible speed, and Lexa actually flinches away from the fury in her eyes. "I would _never_ do that to Nia, and you know it."

A charged silence settles over the room while Roan considers this. Lexa holds her breath. Ontari doesn't move a muscle. He finally shrugs, reluctantly, and everyone breathes again. Ontari casually reaches into the desk drawer and grabs a hair tie, but the lingering fire in her gaze could melt a glacier. Lexa fights the urge to shrink back against the wall.

"Did you get a good look at his face?"

Ontari shakes out her hair and ties it back. "No. He pistol whipped me." She turns her head and points to the fresh gash on her other temple. "But he had a tattoo on his neck. A big cross."

"That isn't much to go on."

"It's all I got." Ontari squares her shoulders and set her jaw. "I know what the fucking punishment is, Roan. Let's just get it over with."

From the kitchen, Murphy's strangled wail rises like a siren and chokes off at the highest point. Chair legs clatter against the floor, and Nia's cold voice carries through his agony in a continuous stream of curses and profanities.

Stoic as ever, Roan unfastens his belt buckle and slides it out of his belt loops, coiling the leather cord tight around his left fist.

"Take off your shirt."

Ontari glances sidelong at Lexa. "Here? What abou-"

"-Two more lashes every time you scream," Roan replies coldly, eyes hardening. "Let's go! Hurry up!"

Ontari glares at Lexa as she peels her fresh shirt back off. "Don't fucking look at me like that."

"Like what?' Lexa asks reflexively, but she could kick herself.

Do not engage. Do not respond. That was the plan she was supposed to stick to.

"Like you feel sorry for me," Ontari spits.

Roan snaps the belt. "On your knees!"

Ontari's glare darkens as she drops, skin and bone thumping against old hardwood. "Don't look," she says again, insists, and this time Lexa recognizes the shame, the subtle blur around her irises, the tug of gravity in her brow.

Lexa starts to turn away, but Roan barks a quick command. "No, Lexa. Watch." He grabs Ontari's hair and jerks her head back. "Watch carefully."

/ / /

 _Present Day…_

They leave hotel well after dark, two hooded figures slinking through the parking lot toward a blue Toyota Prius. Lexa keeps her head down and scans the area on the low, memorizing license plates, searching for suspicious vehicles, suspicious gazes. There's a bulbous man with a distended belly eating a burger in his car and a woman in platform boots arguing with someone on her cell phone under a light pole. Lexa refuses to rule out either of them, but she's out of practice and a little out of breath, running on fumes after a whole day of adrenaline and panic and little to no food. She doesn't even realize that her hands are shaking until she fumbles with her car keys and drops them on the asphalt.

Indra steadies her arm, shakes her head silently, and bends down to retrieve Lexa's keys. "Let me drive you home. You're too tired to be on the road this late."

"What about my car?" She glances half-heartedly over her shoulder. "Is it okay to just leave it here?"

"It'll be fine. C'mon. I'm good at losing tails."

Lexa smiles because she remembers for a moment just how good Indra actually is, but then she thinks about all the reasons it was necessary in the first place, and her smile fades.

She shivers and hugs herself tightly, shoulders bowing inward against the chill wind blowing up off the Willamette River. Heavy clouds race east overhead, driven inland by the jetstream, bruised, bulging purple and steel grey stained orange from the city lights. They'll coalesce somewhere and open up, rain down with fury until they're spent and then waft away, white and wispy, harmless vapors that evaporate over the desert, shadows passing over the midday sun.

Lexa chews on her tongue.

It would be easier to fly away with them. If only. If only that was best. If only she wasn't tethered here by her heart and her conscience, by the weight of the responsibility she bears.

Can't hurt her.

"Will he be okay by himself?" she asks, head lifted to gaze up at a lit window, an incandescent yellow rectangle burning against the dark hotel facade.

Indra opens the passenger door and takes Lexa's arm, coaxing her down into the seat with firm hands. "He'll be alright. I gave him my number."

"What if they come looking for him?"

"I left the front desk with instructions not to answer any questions regarding his whereabouts." Indra peers down at her, hand propped on the edge of the metal door. "Give me some credit, Lexa. You know this isn't my first domestic violence case."

"I wouldn't really call this a domestic violence case."

Indra sniffs, says "they're similar enough," and slams the car door.

They buckle up without a word to each other, and Lexa is content to study Indra quietly as they pull onto MLK, heading north toward the Moda Center. Streetlights band and stretch along the dashboard, bars of pale orange reaching to touch whatever they can, whatever they can expose, can reveal. In the dark car, Indra's face shows no signs of wear or tear. She looks the same as she did all those years ago, leading Lexa up the stairs into a beige government office. Her grey suit is crisp under a black peacoat, her slacks still pressed, spotless as ever, even at the very end of her day. Lexa watches the streetlights bend across her square jaw, her heavy brow, her strongest, most reassuring features. She's cut her curly dark hair shorter, closer to her head, but otherwise, nothing's changed. Nothing except Lexa, looking upon her old mentor with a deep and aching sense of gratitude.

Indra has the heart of a lion and an iron will, an unflinching sense of pride, rooted in her morals like an oak tree rooted in the earth. She is, Lexa realizes, fingers curling into her cuffs, the image of strength that Lexa has always aspired to be, and one she will never achieve. Indra is a warrior for the weak, judicious, unflinching, and unyielding, but Lexa is only a survivor. Lexa bends, sometimes until she breaks. She is tenacious, but she is not stalwart, and the image of hardness on her is nothing more than a learned disguise, worn like armor to cover her weakness. All it took was Costia, burning like the sun, reaching down for Lexa's hand in her cold, frozen crevasse, and she yielded. Again and again. She would do it all again, kicking and screaming, fingernails clawing grooves into the ground, because she can't resist love's siren call.

Lexa will burn until it consumes her. Until it wounds her. Because Lexa says nothing, but she feels _everything_. Every scalding touch. Every searing kiss. It's the most delightfully agonizing form of self-immolation, and she wears Costia's scars like she wears Clarke's freshest wounds. Like the survivor she is.

If love is weakness, then Lexa is the weakest. Nothing shatters her will like love.

"Where am I taking you?" Indra's deep voice breaks through the fog, and Lexa startles awake, realizing she has fallen into a light doze against the window.

She struggles to sit up. "Where are we?"

"Tualatin. I took a detour." Indra checks her rearview mirror. "No one's following us. I made sure of it."

"Thank you for doing this."

Indra inclines her head slightly. "So, where am I taking you?"

"Home I guess."

Lexa gives her the address and Indra arches a brow. "That isn't the safest area."

"I know. I'm trying to save money."

"Why don't you dip into your inheritance and move somewhere nicer?"

"I want to pay my own way."

"None of us are supposed to do everything alone, Lexa. We all have help from our parents and our friends."

"I'm just saving it."

"For what?"

"I don't know yet."

Indra purses her lips. "Are you struggling to keep a job?"

Lexa bristles. "The last one had terrible hours and paid shit."

"Language."

"Sorry." Lexa breathes in through her nose. "It just wasn't working out there."

"Why don't you use your degree for something? Get an office job that's salaried?"

Lexa squirms in her seat, pulls her hands deep into her sleeves and balls up the fabric. "I worked at a couple places out of college, but…"

"But?"

"I was fired from both."

"May I ask why?"

"Sick too often. Inconsistent with my work." Lexa grinds her teeth. "My manager said I showed flashes of brilliance, but some days I was just too _unfocused_."

"Unfocused, hm?"

"I think he would've rather said 'unreliable', but he could tell I was having a rough time and didn't want to hurt my feelings."

"That was considerate of him, I suppose."

"Maybe. He was right. I went home and drank a whole bottle of whiskey, and didn't leave my bed for a week except to drink more and vomit stomach acid, so yeah." Indra is quiet and Lexa shrugs. "I think he hit the nail on the head."

Indra hums, and for a few minutes the only sound between them is the road noise and the winter wind breaking against the front of the car. It's only as she's turning onto the entry ramp for I-84 that Indra finally speaks up.

"I hope you're not still doing that to yourself."

Lexa shrugs. "Not for a few years."

"I wish you would have called me if you were in trouble."

Lexa hangs her head, stares at her knees. "I couldn't. I felt like I was failing you. I didn't want you to see me like that."

Indra clears her throat a bit, just enough to let on that she's affected. "Lexa, I want you to listen to me very closely. You can only fail me if you don't try." Indra's fingers tighten on the steering wheel. "I don't care if you're lying in a gutter in a pool of your own vomit. I won't be disappointed until the moment you give up this fight, do you understand me?"

Lexa blinks back the sting of tears and sets her jaw. "I understand."

Indra nods. "Good."

/ / /

 _14 Years Ago…_

The grass in the backyard is still squishy and soggy, but the sun is finally out. The doors to the shed have been flung wide open, releasing the smell of stale sawdust and motor oil into the air. At the picnic table next to the barbeque, Roan smokes a joint as he shows Lexa how to turn off the safety on his silver and black handgun.

"Like this, see?" He pulls back the little lever until it clicks, "Easy. Just don't forget to turn it back on if you stick it in your waistband or else you'll shoot yourself in the ass."

Lexa snorts and accepts the gun as he hands it to her. "Okay."

"Go ahead and laugh, but my brother did it to himself back in high school."

"Damien did?" Lexa is genuinely surprised. "But he's so… That doesn't seem like something he would do."

Roan blows out a puff of skunky smoke, coughs a little, and wipes his mouth. "That's why you gotta be careful. Check the safety every time." He waves the joint in her face. "Every. Single. Time."

"Okay, okay." Lexa tests the safety lever, clicking it on and off a few times. "I got it."

"If I hear you've accidentally shot yourself I'll beat the crap outta you."

"Aww." Lexa smiles. "I knew you cared."

Roan scoffs. "Like hell I do, you ugly little loser."

He smirks and offers her the joint, eyebrows raised. Lexa accepts. She inhales a bit and tries not to cough, but the marijuana smoke is stronger than a cigarette and it burns all the way down. She fails miserably.

Roan laughs and wallops her on the back. "Nice try."

"I have virgin lungs," Lexa wheezes. "Not my fault."

"Ah, you'll get over that soon enough." Roan picks the gun up off the table and swings his legs over the bench. "I'm gonna take you to the gun range tomorrow, by the way." He stands and lazily makes his way towards the shed where the gun safe is sitting open. "Nia's orders."

"What for?"

"If Ontari and Murphy got robbed? You're a sitting duck."

"You calling me weak?'

Roan reaches up to undo the buttons on his blue flannel, lets it fall open to reveal the wife beater underneath. "I'm calling you scrawny _and_ weak. 'Cause you are."

"Hey!"

"Them's the facts." He shrugs. "Best be makin' your peace with 'em."

Lexa scowls. "I'll be making peace with my fists on your face!"

Roan belly laughs. "Oh yeah? Alright, kid. You can take it to me in training tomorrow."

"Can't wait."

"Yeah, I bet." He disappears into the shed and Lexa hears the door of the gun safe clicking shut. "So, tomorrow I'm teaching you how to fire a gun properly!" he calls, and moments later, emerges back into the cool sunlight. "You're more a danger to yourself than anyone else if you can't use that thing right."

Lexa frowns. "Do you really think I'll have to use it? I've been fine with just my knife so far."

"Yeah, but you never know." Roan drops the spent joint under his boot and grinds it into the ground with his heel. "Things could go south anytime. Better safe than sorry. Wouldn't want you to get hurt."

Lexa smirks. "See? I knew you cared."

"Yeah, whatever." Roan waves her off. "Don't tell nobody."

"Your secret's safe with me."

/ / /

 _Present Day..._

She doesn't mean to take it out on Clarke.

It's just that sometimes her past comes back to haunt her.

Sometimes she just gets scared.

Sometimes, when she's watching people, when she catches sight of smooth muscles and calculating eyes, ramrod posture, unflinching pride, Lexa wonders if she could have been someone better in another life, with another chance, another roll of the dice. She wonders if she could have been strong, if she could have been a leader. Sometimes, if she's feeling especially aimless, she tries to imagine herself in uniform, maybe a marine or a police officer or even a coast guard. She tries to imagine the beauty of a perfectly ordered life, the way she'd like to be if everything else weren't so hard all the time.

A life in uniform is her ultimate power fantasy.

A life in uniform is anathema to everything she is.

Lexa has never been disciplined or dependable in that way, has never been strong in that way, and it's not like she hasn't made attempts to set better habits, it's just that she's frequently agoraphobic and perpetually exhausted, subsisting on a diet of too little sleep and not enough substantive calories to sustain regular workouts. After one particular kickboxing class, when, after two months, even the vegans could still put her back on the mat, Lexa had slunk back to her apartment, drunk too much vodka, and called into work sick, riding the resulting hangover into a crippling bout of depression. She has since settled on jogging as an acceptable exercise routine.

She'll never be an ironwoman. She'll never be a warrior. The bar is a lower now. So much for the everybody-gets-a-trophy, you-can-do-anything generation.

It was all bullshit, anyway.

Where Lexa once longed for physical strength, however, she now longs for strength of character, for what she could have been for Clarke, strong, reliable, a source of support instead of exhaustion.

It's thoughts like these that give life to the unctuous tendrils of self-loathing. It's thoughts like these that keep her up at night, pacing, mumbling, sketching half-formed thoughts on random scraps of paper, balling them up when there's no more room to write and starting all over. There have been many long nights since Clarke's appearance, since her _deus ex machina_ descent to Lexa's mortal life in a cloud of golden promise. Lexa has nearly worn a trail into the hallway outside her bedroom, through the living room, to the kitchen and back, a short walk of only 20 steps roundtrip in her tiny apartment. Some nights Juniper follows, mewling and trilling, vying for scraps of attention, for anxious fingers to scratch behind her ears and stroke along the ridge of her back. Some nights Lexa holds her while she purrs and wonders why a creature as clever as a cat would be foolish enough to depend on _her_.

Clarke is blinded by her love, after all, but Juniper…

But then what? What does that say about Clarke? Beautiful, lovely, intelligent Clarke? That she's foolish? No, that's not right. Has Lexa fooled her somehow? Fooled Clarke? Drawn her in? No, Clarke is too smart for that. That's hubris. That's what Anya always says. It's pure hubris to think that Lexa could _fool_ anyone into loving her.

A choice, Gary called it.

Clarke chose.

But why?

Lexa paces and paces.

The nights drag on without answers.

By now, Lexa knows the bite of guilt more intimately than the sound of her own voice. By now, she knows what Clarke deserves, and what she can't give. By now, she knows when she's obsessing, when she needs to let go, but sometimes she can't.

Sometimes she gets so tired that she has to pull away.

She doesn't mean to take it out on Clarke. Really, she doesn't. It started out innocently enough, just Lexa sitting with Aden and Indra at the hotel, reading a series of panicked text messages from Clarke. Lexa told herself that she'd respond in a bit as she stuffed her phone back in her pocket. But seven hours later the truth of the matter becomes apparent when she arrives home to find Clarke sitting against her front door, furious and scared, demanding answers for the litany of unanswered messages on Lexa's phone. Lexa unlocks her front door and stumbles inside, dismayed as Clarke follows her in, unrelenting in her demands. The scene plays out like something scripted in a mediocre drama, and Lexa is disgusted, with herself, with Clarke, with the obligations society expects her to carry when she's tired and scared, when all she wants to do is collapse on her bed and curl up in a ball until the sun burns out.

The retorts that leave her mouth are inevitable, in a way, harmless darts flung in an effort to protect herself from the sting of guilt, but it's not true, any of it. Clarke's not clingy or controlling. She's just a girl in love, and Lexa feels the regret acutely when she watches her thoughtless barbs punch holes in Clarke's confidence.

Clarke's gaze shimmers and hardens. Her proud shoulders hunch forward.

It's a sobering reminder that Clarke might not be so indestructible after all. Everything breaks down eventually, even titanium and steel, even Clarke, loving and loyal, running herself ragged trying to figure out the right thing to do, the right thing to say, the right way to handle Lexa and all of her clamoring demons. Maybe this is it. Maybe this is the end of the line, as far as they can go. Maybe she's strained it all to breaking, and it's just too much of a mess for another person to carry. Even Clarke.

Lexa's face crumples, stiff upper lip trembling as she says, with finality, "well, nothing gold can stay."

She deserves the slap that follows, and the harsh sob rattling in Clarke's chest. She revels in it. She relishes it. The punishment twists just right. Burns true.

"I wish I was different, but this is who I am," she says, deathly still, boring into Clarke's bloodshot blue with dark, stormy green. "I'll ruin this, and I'll ruin you, too. Stay away from me."

"Liar." Clarke shoves her, and shoves her again. "Liar!"

"I'm serious, Clarke!"

Her back hits the door, and Clarke is pinning her against it with her forearm, always the stronger of the two of them, in spirit and in will. Lexa wonders again if she could've been strong, too, in another timeline.

"Listen to me."

"Stop talking!" Clarke snaps. "I've heard enough bullshit from you today."

Lexa shimmies out of her hold, stumbles backward into the apartment, and Clarke glares at her like she'd sooner rip her limb from limb than kiss her ever again.

"How dare you?!" Clarke spits, lunging forward, shoving Lexa again, and again, harder each time. "How dare you speak to me that way?! How dare you just _give up_ like that?! Like it's just inevitable! You're not crazy, you're self destructive!"

"You don't know what the fuck you're talking about!"

"If you let the crazy destroy us, it will! You have to fight, Lex! If you want me, you have to fight for me! God knows I'll be fighting for _you_ , but I won't let you drag me down with you!"

"Clarke-"

"-Fuck you, Lexa!" Clarke pushes hard enough that Lexa finally stumbles, unbalanced as she is, crashing against the opposite wall with a pained gasp. "You made me fall in love with you! You made me fall in love with you and now you're treating me like this?! Fight, damn it!"

"Clarke-"

"-Fuck _you_! Stop trying to fuck with my head!"

Lexa scrambles upright, eyes streaming, eyes burning. "You knew what you were getting into, Clarke!"

"Like hell I did! I didn't know you'd make me love you and then try to bail!"

"Didn't you?!" Lexa screams. "Clarke, come on! Wasn't it written all over me from day one?! Didn't you see what a fucking _disaster_ I was from day _one_?!"

"No!" Clarke screams back, giving as good as she gets. "No, I didn't! I only saw you, Lexa! I only- fuck! You're the colors!" Clarke bites back a sob and Lexa nearly gasps at the way she glows in her anger, a furious angel, pressing on with gritted teeth through the impending crash. "God, don't you get it?! The paintings, Lexa! I only see the colors when I look at you!"

"Well, you're an idiot!" Lexa rages. "You're fucking naive! This is me, Clarke! The darkness is part of me, too! I'm awful! I'm- I'm-"

"-Shut up, Lexa! Just-"

"-No! I fucking won't just shut up! You need to look at me and see the truth!"

Clarke tears at her hair. "Stop trying to demonize yourself! All you have to do is let me in! All you have to do is let me help you! You shouldn't have to deal with all of this alone! Why can't you just let me in?! Why can't you just fucking do that?!"

Clarke moves to shove Lexa again and this time Lexa counters, catching Clarke's wrist in a painful hold, wrenching until she cries out, spinning them around and using her shoulder to slam them both back into the front door. The impact jars Lexa's hold, and Clarke is ready for it, yanking her arm free, drawing back to strike again. Lexa counters every blow, shifts her weight until they're falling to the floor in a writhing tangle of limbs and curses. Clarke pulls Lexa's hair, scratches her cheek, leaves bruises along her ribs and teeth marks in her shoulder, and Lexa deflects the carnage but she can't return it, can't bring herself to harm Clarke that way. The damage she's inflicted is so much more insidious than anything Clarke can do with her fists.

She made Clarke doubt her own heart.

She spurned Clarke's love.

"I'm sorry," Lexa whispers, when Clarke has finally run out of steam, collapsed against her chest, bitter tears drying on her face.

Clarke doesn't speak for a full minute, but when she does, finally, her voice is thick, raspy, and defeated. "Why do you do that?"

Lexa shifts her back against the hardwood, shifts her aching shoulder blade. "I don't know."

"Try." Clarke lifts her head to look Lexa in the eye. "Try to explain. Try me, Lexa. Tell me something."

Lexa swallows hard, gaze flickering to Clarke's lips as the words swirl together in her head. "I... I don't... it hurts, sometimes."

Clarke frowns. "What hurts?"

"You. The thought of being without you." Lexa takes a shuddering breath and lets her head fall back against the floor. How long has she been this exhausted? "Loving you hurts."

"But why does it hurt?"

"Because I destroy- ...No. That's not right." Lexa squeezes her swollen eyelids shut, calls upon ten years of therapy and the last little bit of strength she has and tells Clarke the truth. "Because I lost the last girl I loved, and even though my therapist keeps saying it wasn't," Lexa reaches up to cover her eyes, "it was kinda my fault. She got hurt because of me. Because I was involved with bad people."

"You expect to lose me, too," Clarke realizes.

"Yeah."

Clarke sighs, and it sounds awful, tired and ragged like a threadbare flag, wind-whipped and frayed at the edges. "I wish I could say with absolute certainty that you won't, but I can't predict the future. Whatever you're dealing with, Lex, I might get hurt. I don't know."

Lexa sucks in a sharp breath, keeps her aching eyes closed.

"All I know is…" Clarke takes a deep breath against Lexa's sternum, blows it out against her neck. "All I know is you can't treat me like this. You have to let me in. You can't ignore my calls just because you're feeling insecure. Love really hurts sometimes. It's supposed to."

"I'm just trying to keep you safe. I can't lose you, too. I can't-" Lexa's voice wavers. "...I'm sorry."

Clarke reaches up to stroke her cheek. "I'm sorry, too."

"You have nothing to be sorry for."

Clarke's fingers brush a pink scratch on Lexa's chin. "I hurt you."

"I hurt you first, so we're even."

"No, that's not right. Relationships aren't about keeping score."

"I know, but I'm just trying to say...what am I trying to say?"

"I don't know. What are you trying to say?"

"I just mean that I forgive you." Lexa swallows. "Please don't think less of yourself because of this. I definitely don't think any less of you."

"Okay. Just..." Clarke sighs and rubs her cheek into the soft material of Lexa's sweatshirt. "Talk to me. Tell me what's going on. Let me decide for myself what I want to be involved in." Lexa's breath catches, but Clarke presses on, relentlessly. "I know you're involved in something. I know it has something to do with Aden. Lexa...talk to me."

"...Okay."

"Yeah?"

Lexa nods once, stiffly, eyes flicking open. She leans up to press her nose against Clarke's hair, inhaling as deep as her lungs will allowed. Her lashes flutter. Her hands come up to thread through Clarke's golden locks, to glide down Clarke's back.

"I love you."

Clarke's breath hitches.

"What's wrong?"

"...My heart still jumps every time you say that." Clarke shudders, hands clutching tighter at Lexa's shoulders. "It affects me so much."

Lexa's fingers creep beneath the waistband of Clarke's jeans, eliciting a tiny gasp, an unconscious undulation of Clarke's hips. Lexa's lips part, fingertips curling firmly into soft, curving flesh. She decides to probe deeper under the denim.

"Wait." Clarke breathes hot against Lexa's neck. "Wait, wait, wait."

Lexa digs in with her fingernails and Clarke arches. "Hm?"

"We're supposed to be…" Clarke moans. "...Supposed to be…" She moans again, louder this time, and bites into Lexa's neck.

And oh god, it feels so good. After a whole day of hell, Clarke's teeth feel like heaven. Lexa sighs out, lets her head fall back against the floor.

"Supposed to what?" she breathes. Her hands slip under the back of Clarke's cotton underwear.

"Fuck," Clarke huffs, releasing Lexa's skin. "Fuck, Lex." She shudders and rolls her hips. "You know I'm sensitive there."

"I do." Lexa smiles softly, blissed out, hair spread in a dark halo around her face.

She retracts a hand from Clarke's jeans to reach up into blonde hair and pull Clarke's head upright, jaw still slack, mouth mid-gasp, blue eyes lidded and black pupils blown. Lexa takes a moment to stare, to memorize, to commit, and then leans forward to kiss Clarke's gasping mouth. She slides her tongue in effortlessly, swallowing Clarke's helpless moan as a current of electricity passes between them, jolts Clarke's gently writhing body.

Clarke's muscles all tense at once, and Lexa recognizes the throb in her fingertips. She knows now that she needs more.

"We're supposed to be talking," Clarke whispers, breathing in against Lexa's lips.

"We can talk after." Lexa sucks Clarke's bottom lip between her teeth, watches Clarke's eyes roll back.

"Oh god."

"Is that a yes?"

Clarke's mouth find hers, initiates another searing kiss. "Mm...god. Yes. Hurry _up_."

Lexa rolls them both and puts Clarke on her back.

/ / /

They're both sticky and cold by the time they're sated. Lexa lies curled into Clarke's side, arm stretched out across her stomach, fingers dragging against the chilly hardwood floor. She's draped a leg over Clarke's thighs for good measure, and she hasn't felt so peaceful in days.

"Is it too late to order a pizza?" Clarke mumbles, eyes closed. "I'm starving."

"Mm...It's 1am."

"So, too late, then?"

Lexa kisses Clarke's ribs. "There's a hipster waffle place a couple blocks away. They're open 24 hours."

Clarke snorts. "You want me to put on clothes? You must be joking."

"Were you planning to answer the door for the pizza guy naked?"

"That sounds suspiciously like judgement."

"No judgement here, just jealousy."

Clarke chuckles and slides a warm hand over Lexa's hip. "I was gonna make you do it, if you must know."

"Anything for you dear." Lexa sits up and stretches suddenly, shivering away from Clarke's body heat. She wraps her arms around herself to ward off the chill. "Actually, I have some pizza bagels left, I think."

"Oh, thank god." Clarke stretches languidly on the floor and sits up. The only items of clothing still clinging to her body are her wool socks, and an amused little grin slides onto her face as she catches sight of them. "Let's do it. Fire those babies up."

"They aren't GMO free," Lexa cautions playfully, and Clarke just rolls her eyes.

"I think I'll live."

Lexa pulls on her sweatshirt and underwear and hops up on her feet. "Go get in bed. I'll turn on the oven."

"I miss you already," Clarke says, and peels herself off the floor. "Hurry up, babe. I'll warm up the bed for you." She tosses Lexa a sly smile over her shoulder as she saunters off down the hallway, pausing to scoop up Juniper as she passes.

Lexa pads into the the kitchen to the start the oven and breaks down silently over the stove.

She feels 17 all over again.


	7. Interlude 2: Raven

_5.24.16_

 _Last update for tonight everyone. Please don't forget to leave a review! :)_

 _Enjoy~_

* * *

 **7\. Interlude 2: Raven**

Clarke calls her crying so hard that Raven can barely understand what she's saying over the phone. It's 1am and Raven is still awake watching crap TV, but she's tired, too tired to do whatever the fuck is happening with Clarke right now over the goddamn telephone. So, she tells her to either come over or hang up and call back tomorrow.

Clarke mumbles something through her tears and hangs up.

Raven takes that as a sign of...well, something. She's not really sure, actually. She doesn't have a lot of experience dealing with an emotional Clarke. Not since Finn Collins decided to be a professional dick and date them both.

(Joke's on him. They're besties now.)

She's getting another Rainier beer from the refrigerator, her third, when the lock turns in the front door and Clarke lets herself in out of the rain. She's deathly silent. No shout of "hey nerd" or "sup bitch" or any of their other usual greetings, and that's when Raven knows that something is actually wrong.

Really wrong.

Like, maybe the sobbing should have been fair warning? But now Raven's really, _really_ sure that something serious has happened. Something like Jake. Which…

Shit.

Raven reaches into the fridge and grabs another beer.

"Clarkie?" She pulls her head out of the fridge and jumps, hand (and beer) flying over her stuttering heart. "Jesus, babe. You scared me."

Standing in the dark kitchen, illuminated by only the dim refrigerator bulb, Clarke looks like a wet grim reaper with her black hood pulled up over her face. Raven lets the refrigerator door close, plunging them both back into shadow. Only the pale flickering from the TV lights their faces now. It's a little eerie and a lot creepy. Raven sets the beers on the counter and reaches out to push Clarke's hood back, knuckles brushing past damp, tear-stained cheeks. Clarke doesn't say a word.

Raven's hand falls to Clarke's wrist, squeezing.

"What the hell happened to you?"

Clarke starts to shake her head, stops herself, and heaves a sigh, wet and thick, hissing like she's forcing the air through her teeth. She reaches up to brush her hair out of her eyes.

"I'm in over my head."

Raven nods like she understands what the hell Clarke is talking about and moves to undo the zipper of her wet rain jacket. Clarke doesn't protest, doesn't _even_ move to help. Raven purses her lips because this isn't normal at all, isn't like Clarke at all.

Clarke who is always in control.

Clarke who pushes herself until she's stretched to breaking.

Raven sucks in a deep breath. Because fuck. This is definitely Clarke breaking. She tugs the gore tex sleeves off Clarke's shoulders and shakes her head. What the hell is even going on? It's late and it's cold and Raven is tired and Clarke is standing in her kitchen in the dark, crying and giving her cryptic answers. Raven turns and tosses the raincoat on the back of a kitchen chair. When she turns back around, she recognizes the baggy garment draped over Clarke's torso.

"Are you wearing Bellamy's sweatshirt?" she asks, frowning.

Clarke hugs herself and turns her head away. "Yeah."

"He's been looking for that since last Easter."

"...Please don't tell him I have it."

"...Okay."

Raven stacks the beers atop one another and picks them up in one hand. She takes Clarke's arm in the other and leads her silently into the living room. Clarke comes willingly, lifelessly. Her tennis shoes scuff softly against the carpet. Her wet hair swings back and forth like dozens of golden vines, slapping against her cheeks and her neck, sticking fast against her temples. When Raven pushes her down onto the couch, Clarke falls like a dead weight and crumples in on herself. Her glistening eyes fix themselves on the flickering TV screen.

Raven sees the circles under her eyes and purses her lips.

Son of a bitch.

"Clarke."

"Hm?" Her eyes are glued to _The_ _Bachlorette_ , to some cut scene of assholes with swim trunks and tanning booth memberships swarming around a pool outside a blasé California mansion.

"Do you maybe wanna tell Mama Ray what's going on?"

Clarke blinks slowly. "Remember that time we fucked?"

Raven squints. "What?"

"Oh, you don't?" Clarke shrugs. "Well, you were really drunk, I guess, so…"

"Again, what?"

"We never talked about it." Clarke shifts, licks her lips. "I assumed you just didn't wanna bring it up, but I always thought we should've. We should've been able to talk about something like that."

"Um." Raven shuts her mouth with a click, sits for a moment in silence watching Clarke, reading the signs. "Is this some kind of confession or...?"

Clarke's gaze shifts from the screen, and she turns her head just enough to eye Raven's contorted expression. "It's a few years too late for that."

Raven inhales sharply, feels her heart sink as the pieces click together. "Oh." She reaches up to fix her ponytail. "I guess I...always wondered."

"Sorry."

Raven drops her hands, plays with calices worn by heavy tools into the fingers of her right hand. "But you slept with everyone, though."

Clarke huffs a laugh, and it sounds heavier than a ton of wet concrete. "I lied."

Raven's fingers still. "...I wasn't that drunk."

"I know." Clarke's expression sobers. "I was giving you an out."

"I suck at taking outs."

"Now we're both liars."

Raven runs a forefinger over a rough spot on her thumb, built up by the handle of her favorite wrench. "You didn't talk to me for six months."

Clarke smiles to herself, small and twisted and sad. "Sorry."

Raven closes her eyes and reminds herself to breathe, to let the bruises of old guilt ache, take their course, and pass. "Me too." She cracks both beers and hands one to Clarke, who accepts it wordlessly and takes a sip. "So, is this why you came here tonight? Guilt over college hookups?"

"I already told you."

"That you're in over your head, yeah, I got it, but with what? Is the show stressing you out? Are the clients being bitches?"

"It's Lexa," Clarke says, and Raven just sighs because she kind of already fucking knew it was that high maintenance basket case, but this is bad.

Clarke is really invested in this chick for some reason, and Raven was really hoping that whatever it was, it wasn't her.

"What happened?"

"She used to run drugs."

"What?" Raven does a double take, because jesus howard christ, _of course_ she did, and this is exactly what Raven was afraid of.

"A long time ago. In foster care."

"She was in foster care?"

"Her foster mom made her do it. Made all of them do it. Lexa had to testify against her. There was a kill order on her head."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Holy shit, Clarke, slow down!" Raven slugs down half her beer, wipes her mouth on her forearm, and sets it down on the coffee table. "Okay, did you say kill order?"

Clarke looks numb, expressionless, just says, "yeah," and keeps staring at the TV.

Raven watches Clarke watch the douchebags frolic with the Bachlorette for a minute, searching for the right words. "So…" she shakes her head in disbelief, "a drug dealer wanted your girlfriend dead?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"I told you. Lexa testified against her."

"She's in prison?"

"Nia? Yeah."

"Nia. That's her name?"

Clarke nods. "That's her name."

Raven scoots closer to Clarke on the couch, puts an arm around her hunched shoulders, pulls Clarke's head into the hollow of her neck. Clarke comes willingly, like all she really wanted in the first place was a hug, and Raven can give her that. She's not going to lie and say she didn't see something like this coming, because she grew up in the hood-adjacent, and she _knows_ what inner-city tragedy looks like, the way it hangs on a person's frame all wrong, makes their shadows look longer and their eyes look deeper, like they've stared into abyss and the abyss has stared back.

Maybe, for once, this won't turn into something ugly. Raven can only hope. Clarke's silver-spoon palette isn't ready to handle this kind of grit. Tragedy is one thing, but the crushing, near monolithic weight of the American underbelly is another fucking thing entirely.

Raven brushes Clarke's signature blonde hair over her ear. "Are you okay?"

Clarke scoffs quietly. "I'm here aren't I?"

"True, true."

"I hit her, Ray."

Raven stiffens, tightens her hold on Clarke's shoulder. Clarke's breath turns shallow and stuttering, and suddenly Raven's neck is damp. Fingers curl into Raven's henley, a desperate hand snarling in the fabric, clinging with the tenacity of a child waking from a nightmare.

"I mean...okay? Is that such a big deal? You hit Finn once."

"Not the same thing at all."

"Okay…I guess."

"It was different, Ray. I was different." Clarke shudders against her. "I was furious, like, when people say that they see red? I never knew what the fuck they were talking about until last night." Clarke's fingers curl until they're digging into Raven's skin hard enough to leave bruises through the thick fabric. "I didn't know I could get like that. I didn't know I was a violent person."

"Okay, slow down. Just- slow down for a minute. What happened?"

Clarke's limbs shift, fingers relax just a bit. "We had a fight and I lost my temper. She wasn't returning my calls. I was waiting for her thinking she was dead in a fucking ditch somewhere, and then she showed up and wouldn't answer any of my questions and just walked inside like I was being annoying-"

"-Breathe, babe."

Clarke sniffs and reaches up to wipe her eyes. "Sorry."

"It's fine."

"I just… she called me clingy and controlling."

Raven forgets herself and sits up, accidentally jarring Clarke. "She fucking _what_?!"

"Ray-"

"-Sorry, but _no_." Raven balls her hands into fists. "That's _way_ the fuck outta line. Does that bitch even realize how high fucking maintenance she is? Frankly, you're doing her a goddamn favor by caring enough to call her ungrateful ass and check in!" Raven curls her lip. "Dump her ass, Clarke."

"You think I should dump everyone."

"I'm always right. Your taste? Horrible."

"Raven, that's different. Those relationships were meant to fail."

"That doesn't even make sense," Raven mutters darkly.

"Whatever. It doesn't matter. Just- not this one, though, you know? This one was different. Everything seemed like it was going better, except..." Clarke puts her face into her hands. "...Except now I'm some kind of violent monster apparently." She shrugs helplessly and sits up straight, staring off blankly through the corner of the room. "I don't know what came over me, Ray. I just feel everything for her, and I…"

"You lost control?"

Clarke nods. "I lost control."

"We all do, Griffin. Especially when we feel shit." Raven reaches for her beer. "The more you care, the more you feel, and if you're feeling scared for someone? You can bet your cute little butt you're gonna get angry."

Clarke's lips twitch, and then she smiles through her tears, like a ray of sun breaking through the clouds. "You really think my butt is cute?"

Raven snorts. "Sure."

"Aw, thanks, Ray." Clarke chuckles. "Your butt's pretty cute, too."

"I know."

"That humility though."

"Never."

"That was more a suggestion than an observation."

Raven smiles and lets her eyes fall to her lap, studies the loose stretch of her soft grey sweats across her thighs. She's thinner now that she isn't pounding beers every night with the guys at the shop, and the running helps. The TV continues to flicker in the dark room, lighting the contours of muscle swelling above her knees. Clarke is thinner, too, she realizes, but it's different. Raven glances sideways, notes the telltale hang of Bellamy's sweatshirt on Clarke's hunched back.

"I thought I was okay last night," Clarke murmurs, picks mindlessly at her cuticles. "I really did. I mean, we fought and we made up. We talked about it. She didn't tell me everything, but she started to. I really thought I was fine." She huffs. "And then this morning I left to go paint and I got halfway there and I had to pull over so I could throw up my coffee."

Raven reaches out and squeezes Clarke's knee. "It caught up with you, huh?"

"Yeah." Clarke wipes her blotchy cheeks on Bellamy's sleeves. "Today sucked."

"I bet." Raven sighs.

"Can I stay here for a few days?" Clarke shifts and draws her legs up onto the couch, finally puts the Rainier can to her lips and drinks some more of her beer. She turns to look at Raven through her lashes. "Please? Tell Bellamy I'm sorry. I'll go hang out at at the coffee shop if you guys need time or something or-"

"-Clarke, shut up." Raven tugs Clarke's knees until her legs unfold onto her lap. "Of course you can stay."

A murmured "thank you" is all she gets.

"Also, just for the record, Bellamy and I broke up again."

Clarke groans softly. "Oh my god. Get your shit together."

"I don't think there's anything to get together. I think we're through for good."

Clarke just hums sadly and Raven lets her eyes drift back to the atrocity of muscles and hair gel parading around the pool deck on TV. If she lets her mind drift away it's almost nice to be like this again, because being strong for Clarke is a privilege. To everyone else, Clarke is the girl that never breaks. Only Raven gets to pick up the pieces, and, fuck. She'd do it a thousand times over.

A thousand fucking times.

"I'm sorry, Ray." Clarke's soft voice breaks her concentration.

"About Bell?" Raven shrugs. "It's okay. It was amicable. It's better this way."

"Okay."

"We'll probably still hook up or something. I don't know. We'll see."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

Raven watches the beefy Bachelorette contestants clink their margarita glasses together in the hot tub, falling over themselves to lean into the leggy blonde in the center. It's so bad it's good, watching people do strange, desperate things. It's so bad it's real.

"I was going to. It just isn't a big deal," Raven says honestly. "You have a lot going on right now."

Clarke opens her mouth to protest and immediately snaps it shut again. "I guess that's actually true."

"Sure fucking is."

"Can I have a blanket?"

"You tired?"

Clarke heaves a laugh, humorless and dry. "Exhausted."

"'Kay, well, you ain't sleepin' on the couch."

"I don't want to impose."

"Shut the fuck up, Griffin, you trustafarian piece of shit. Shove your high class manners up your tight little asshole and come to bed with me."

"Aw." Clarke smirks. "I bet you say that to all the girls."

Raven snorts. "Strictly dickly over here."

"Experience says otherwise. How about mostly dickly?"

"How about we have a conversation about my apparently fluid sexuality on another dark, rainy night, okay? That okay with you, Clarkington?"

"I love it when you use my posh name. Okay, I'll allow it."

Raven hops up off the couch and holds out an elbow. "Madame?"

Clarke's answering laugh sounds genuine for the first time all night.

Later, they lie on their backs in Raven's queen bed listening to raindrops patter on the roof, talking softly about old Disney movies and astrological signs until they fall asleep. Clarke drifts off first, curled up on her side, mouth slightly parted, arms tucked against her chest. Raven watches for a while and thinks about college, thinks about the bright flare of pain and the lingering chill of loneliness. Clarke's blonde hair is tied up now, still damp, still tangled, and Raven almost reaches out to touch it, but she doesn't quite make it.

Never quite made it.

She doesn't see the text message from Bellamy until late the next morning.

 _i'm sorry_


	8. Slice 6

_5.29.16_

 _Happy three day weekend my American chums! I don't know about all of you, but I needed this extra day off something fierce. Like, FIERCE._

 _Got another fairly intense chapter for all you amazing people! I keep getting these amazing compliments and kind words from everyone, and it's so awesome. I'm not gonna lie. It's kept me super productive this last month. It's like I can't get new material out for y'all fast enough :D_

 _Btws, find a playlist for this fic at the 8tracks website under:_

/aeschylusrex/nothing-gold-can-stay-mix-1

 _Enjoy~_

* * *

 _I have only two emotions,_  
 _Careful fear and dead devotion._  
 _I can't get the balance right._  
 _Threw my marbles in the fight._

 _-The National_

 **8.**

 _10 Years Ago…_

"Lexa… Lexa..."

"Hm?"

"There's someone outside."

"...Who?"

"I don't know, but I think they're watching the house."

With great reluctance, Lexa pushes the covers aside, untangles her limbs, and struggles upright. Her head is foggy and her eyes are hazy. She's tired, reasonably pliant as she glides a comforting hand along Costia's spine, settling at the juncture of her shoulder blades and her neck. It's a touch that is implicitly allowed, one they haven't talked about yet, like sharing their beds and spooning, springing apart milliseconds before the parents come in so they don't look too close. The message has never been explicitly discussed, though it seems to be implicitly understood. Neither of them are eager to bridge that gap just yet, but goosebumps ripple across Costia's exposed flesh all the same, and Lexa's skin pebbles in sympathy. Her nerves prickle with a thousand tiny needles, a network of conductors to channel the electricity that rolls up her back like a wave of lightning in a pyroclastic cloud.

She leans forward mindlessly to press her lips against the soft curl of hair at the base of Costia's neck, a tendril fallen loose from her messy bun, still smelling faintly of chlorine and sunblock from their day at the community pool. Lexa's mouth curves around the heat she finds, lingering when she tastes the hint of chemicals, and Costia's body stiffens at first contact. She gasps out and shudders softly, heightening Lexa's five senses to a painful degree. Every sensation is suddenly experienced with supernatural acuity. Her heart stuttering. Her heart slamming hard against her ribcage. Costia's body arching unconsciously back into her touch. Costia's shaky intake of breath. Lexa is stumbling blindly across point of no return, exhaling roughly against Costia's neck, drawing another involuntary shudder from the muscles beneath her lips.

A hand reaches back to grip her shirt, and Lexa's head finally begins to clear.

And...fuck.

"Fuck."

Costia shudders, and even Lexa can hear that her own voice sounds different, sleep-saturated and husky and honey-dipped in arousal. And it's having an effect.

And it's...fuck.

Costia leans back until she's falling against Lexa's chest, until Lexa is trying to catch her without putting her hands in any dangerous spots. And it's easier said than done, because everything on Costia has been dangerous for such a long time now. It's just such a terribly delicate predicament.

It's just…

It's just so...

What is she doing?

What the fuck is she doing ?

They're foster sisters. They're best friends. They're...something that no one else will ever understand. The adults won't see past the labels or the titles, the legal jargon, the boundaries laid out by the state upon the foundation of God's moral law. The law of family binds them, separates them, and whatever happens next, she knows absolutely that this won't go over well.

"Um." Lexa licks her lips as Costia's head drops back onto her unguarded shoulder. "I… don't really...um..."

Costia rolls her head to the side, lets her lips brush languidly along the strong curve of Lexa's jaw. Her hand reaches up to stroke Lexa's cheek, to light Lexa's chest on fire, and it isn't just another one of their implicitly allowed touches.

It's rather illicit , actually.

Lexa swallows hard.

Well… It'll just have to be a secret, then. Theirs to keep. Indefinitely. Forever.

"There's someone outside the house," Costia murmurs. Her lips brush feather-light against Lexa's skin with each uttered syllable. "Should we wake up Mom and Dad?"

Lexa whimpers and twists, suffering under the attention of Costia's blunt fingernails clawing lightly down the side of her neck. Her lips are throbbing and her body is awake now, suddenly, as if a bucket of ice water has been dumped over her head. The craving flips on like a switch in the dark, and Lexa is all lit up.

The point of no return is a spec on the horizon now.

"...Would we have to stop doing this?"

Costia's lips curve against her pulse point. "Only for a few minutes."

"Fuck." Lexa breathes in, slides a greedy hand north along Costia's toned abdomen. "Should we maybe…maybe talk about...this?"

"Yeah."

"Right, yeah."

Costia groans reluctantly and pulls away, leans forward across the bed and beckons for Lexa to peer down through the window at the dark neighborhood street below. There isn't much light from the lamp posts, and the old oak branches have grown thick with just enough foliage to obscure most of the view, but Lexa still sees it. Still knows immediately which car Costia is talking about. A black Honda Civic, 7 years old, with rust in the wheel wells. She's never seen it before and it's out of place on Costia's posh avenue of antique mansions. There is no doubt in her mind of malicious intent.

Roan would be so proud of her.

Would be.

"It's not much to go on." Lexa leans her head against the glass. "But you're right, someone is definitely casing the house."

"Thieves?" Costia's face drops, and Lexa reaches out to soothe the panic there with a thumb.

"Probably."

Costia clambers off the bed. "We should definitely wake up Mom and Dad." She starts for the door, yellow pajama bottoms swishing around her ankles, then stops suddenly and half turns toward Lexa. "But we should still talk after."

Lexa blanches and scrubs her face quickly with both hands. "Crap, I hope you're not hoping for something super coherent."

Costia smiles, brilliant and beautiful, caught momentarily in a thin beam of moonlight. "Of course not."

"Well, as long as you're prepared for this mess..."

Costia snorts softly, hesitates for a moment, then pads back across the bedroom to tilt Lexa's chin and press a soft kiss into her stunned lips. "You're a lot of things, Lex, but you're not subtle. I've been prepared for a while."

"Shit." Lexa blushes furiously. "It was the park thing, wasn't it?"

Costia snorts. "Maybe just a little."

"I tried really hard to play it off, yunno, pretending I was drunk and all, trying to give you an out."

"Yeah, and I knew you were lying because I'd been watching you and you hadn't touched the booze all night."

"I'm sorry, you know, for the record. For springing it on you like that."

"I'm not."

Lexa frowns. "You seemed kinda sorry at the time."

"Well, I think you just caught me off guard. It was all pretty dramatic, right?" Costia rolls her eyes. "I mean, I chased you through a park. I'm surprised there wasn't a camera crew following me."

"Yeah, and I totally punched your date and stormed out of the party."

"I kinda don't blame you. I was rubbing David Pham in your face."

Lexa straightens up on the bed. "So, wait. You already knew?"

Costia responds with an apologetic smile. "I knew it was fun to make you jealous, and I wasn't too worried about why yet, but you pretty much took care of that for me."

"Yeah…" Lexa drops her head, blushes even deeper.

Costia just laughs and moves toward the bedroom door, murmurs "we'll continue this later," as she blows a kiss, slipping out silently into the hall, and all Lexa can think about for five whole minutes is the tingling sensation on her lips.

She almost forgets the suspicious car altogether.

/ / /

 _Present Day…_

 _._

" _You have reached the voicemail box of_ … Clarke Griffin … _please leave a message after the tone. When you are finished, please hang up, or press pound for more options_ …-"

"- _Hi, Clarke, it's me, um… I'm just calling to check in and see if you're okay. I haven't heard from you since yesterday. Anya said she hasn't heard from you either... I guess...if you need me I'll be with Indra and Gustus. I texted you her number like you asked…um... I love you… talk to you later. Bye._.."

.

/ / /

.

Message from: Anya Woods

Received at 11:03 AM

 _-isn't it kinda soon to be saying i love you? you haven't even known her three months_

.

Message to: Anya Woods

Sent at 11:16 AM

 _-i feel like i've known her a lot longer though_

 _-like, i don't believe in soulmates, but…_

 _-idk, we're kindred spirits or something_

.

Message from: Anya Woods

Received at 11:21 AM

 _-ugh you're so gross_

 _-just be careful, dipshit. remember to take care of yourself_

.

/ / /

Lexa takes her watch off before she goes out, turns her phone up loud and shoves it down to the bottom of her bag. She mashes a sticky gum wrapper over the dashboard clock in her car, and leans back against the seat with her eyes closed. The wan winter sun warms her face through the windshield.

She's trying not to count, but it's like trying not to breathe.

It's been 24 hours since she last heard from Clarke.

/ / /

Gustus doesn't hesitate. Never hesitates. All these years later, his faith in humanity is unwavering. He trusts her implicitly, and it's a lovely certainty to hold onto, even if it does make her a little jealous, knowing she isn't an exception to the rule.

Something about the way Anya's hard expression softens for her, and only her, warms her up in the center.

"He can stay with me," Gustus assures her, as soon as she and Aden have finished relating their story for the second time. "I have a spare bedroom at the moment."

Across the room, the floorboards creak under Indra's boots as she shifts her weight. She tugs the curtains away from the front window again and peaks outside, lets them fall when she doesn't find anything of interest. They all turn to watch her, to wait for her consent. She's taking a risk being present at all, not dragging Aden into her office to get him processed and placed in a state sanctioned home. She'll get final say, and rightfully so.

Her dark eyes rove up and down across charming old living room. The two-story craftsman home is a family heirloom, a Portland classic that checks all the boxes: checkerboard tile on the kitchen floor, original refinished hardwood, square windows with thick white frames, heavy doors with ornate brass knobs, steep concrete steps out front ascending to a wide, covered porch. Inside, Gustus has only replaced what is necessary over the years, and the decor is eclectic, antique furniture scattered amongst modern, comparatively anachronistic pieces.

"Do you have a security system?" Indra finally asks, stepping away from the window.

Gustus nods. "Of course."

She paces the up the length of the room, arms crossed, fingers tapping against her elbows. "Do you keep any weapons in the house?"

"Two handguns and a hunting rifle. All locked up."

Indra glances sidelong at Aden, sprawled out at the kitchen table working on the largest bowl of Cocoa Puffs Lexa's ever seen. Gustus had actually pulled a small mixing bowl out of the cupboard upon request. He looks a little better showered and rested, a little rosier around the cheeks with a bit of solid food. All eyes in the room turn to him, thoughtfully, and he catches on a moment later, glancing up with owlish eyes and a spoon halfway to his mouth.

"Yeah?"

Indra purses her lips. "If you stay here, you have to keep your head down until I say it's safe to do otherwise. Do you understand me?"

Aden blinks slowly and nods. Lexa's lips twist in amusement. Indra has silenced his saltier, more defiant language in under 48 hours.

She remembers what that was like.

"The woman you're mixed up with is a ruthless drug dealer who won't hesitate to kill you if it serves her purposes, and it doesn't matter that she's in prison, she has plenty of operatives on the outside who will do her bidding." She levels a pointed look at Lexa. "We've learned that the hard way before."

Lexa forces all the emotion out of her expression and replies with a stiff nod. Aden glances at her curiously, gaze lingering even after she's turned her head away.

Across from her, sitting comfortably on a green, pinstriped, mid-century couch, Gustus strokes his beard thoughtfully. It's trimmed much shorter than when they first met all those years ago, back when he still rode a Harley on the weekends and braided his beard down the center. He looks more like a bonafide lumbersexual now, colorful tattoos crawling up his neck under his black collared shirt, hair buzzed short on the sides, long and slicked back on top. Lexa glances down at her wrinkled t-shirt and wonders if she should update her look.

She wonders what Clarke would think about it.

Fuck. Damnit. She's trying not to think about Clarke.

"Indra," Gustus spreads his beefy, muscled arm along the back of the low couch, "if it would make you feel more comfortable, maybe we can arrange regular check-ins. I don't mind hosting dinner here a few nights a week."

"I'm just concerned about your case load. Can you afford to be here while he adjusts?"

"I can." Gustus nods and smiles warmly at Aden, who has glanced up from his cereal to watch the proceedings in the living room. "I've been delegating more of my cases to Nyko lately. The question is can you afford to take the time off?"

A faint smile graces Indra's stern mouth. "It it's important enough, I can."

"Well, between the three of us, then, I don't think it'll be a problem."

From her antique, crushed velvet reading chair, Lexa suddenly hears her phone beep in the front hallway. She's on her feet in a flash, striding with purpose and speed across the living room. She retrieves her bag from the coat hanger next to the front door and digs through it desperately, nearly sighing out loud in relief when she brings the screen to her face.

1 New Message

Lexa punches in her security code at lightning speed, but frowns when she sees the name in her inbox.

 _-i called her phone but no answer sorry_

 _-let it go, baby cousin. she'll call when she's ready_

The phone goes back in her bag, stuffed once again to the very bottom, and Lexa stomps back through the house to get a much needed glass of water. She passes through a tall, elegantly framed doorway at the far end of the dining room to find that the kitchen is surprisingly small. The cabinets are all white and antique, made with the same heavy craftsmanship as the doors throughout the house. Some have even been fitted with panes of glass to display finer china. The refrigerator looks more recent, and Gustus has installed a brand new double-trough farm sink and a stainless steel gas stove, but the backsplash is still the original white, octagonal subway tile, and the countertops are still paved with the same black stone, and together with the checkerboard floor it all still looks quite old. She searches the cabinets for a cup and settles on a coffee mug instead when she grows increasingly agitated and impatient. She hears the floor creak just outside as she flips on the water and braces her arm against the sink, eyes traveling out through the window to the fir tree in the backyard.

"Hey." A strong hand claps her on the shoulder. "What's wrong?"

Lexa hangs her head, feeling suddenly a lot more brittle, a lot less composed. She doesn't really know what to say. That she's screwed up another good thing? That old record is scratched by now.

"Wait, I've seen that face before." Gustus leans down to get a better look at her.

Lexa turns her head away.

"You used to wear that face for a girl."

Lexa growls in annoyance, hates that she's so easy to read these days. She used to be an enigma, a stone wall, emotionally impenetrable, but ever since Clarke came along, ever since Clarke, she's been weaker. She's been telegraphing everything she feels. She's been out of control. She's been obsessive and intense in all the worst ways, and-

"-Being with Clarke is bringing out all the worst aspects of my personality."

"Clarke? You're dating men now?"

"Clarke's a girl," Lexa replies, in an unnecessarily derisive tone.

Gustus steps back. "Sorry, I didn't mean to imply."

"You were surprised, and I was offended by that."

"I'm sorry."

"It's fine." Lexa shakes her head, angry at herself yet again. "I'm offended by everything right now. I'm not thinking clearly."

"Something you wanna talk about?" Gustus leans up against the counter and crosses his arms, makes the muscles in his massive forearms bulge out even more. "I'm all ears."

Lexa thinks of the song in her head, the one on the radio that's been with her for a week, and recites the lyrics slowly. "I have only two emotions, careful fear and dead devotion. I can't get the balance right. Threw my marbles in the fight."

Gustus smiles. "That's nice. Is that a poem?"

"Something like that." She leans away from the sink and peeks out into the dining room. "It just about sums me up lately. Where's Aden?"

Gustus glances over at the window, peers out into the sunlit garden behind the house. "He's checking out his new bedroom with Indra. I imagine she's using the opportunity to give a him a stern lecture about being a responsible house guest." His brow furrows and Lexa is surprised to see that he looks a little hurt about it. "It's like she doesn't even know me."

Lexa smirks. "Don't worry. I'm sure he'll love all the yardwork."

"He'll love it or he'll leave." Gustus yawns and stretches his arms back behind his head. "No slackers allowed in this house. He'll be too busy to get into trouble."

"He's an addict, by the way. I'm not sure if Indra told you."

"I know. He's got that heroin chic look that all the designers are crazy about." Gustus laughs, a puff of air exhaled, short and quick. "Maybe I'll get him a job at Calvin Klein instead."

"Good point. Chopping wood might ruin his desirable emaciated physique."

"God, these kids, you know?" Gustus shakes his head and bites the corner of his bottom lip, thick fingers coming up to stroke his beard. "I probably take one in every couple years or so, and it's the same story over and over again. It's like a broken record. Don't people get tired of the same mistakes?" He scoffs. "These kids always get caught in the middle, and then it's just rape, abuse, drugs, and neglect. The neverending story. You save who you can, but you can't save them all, and that's the reality you have to live with."

Lexa hums noncommittally and reaches down to refill her mug. "Sure is."

"But we saved you, at least."

Lexa freezes mid motion and turns to look at him, studies his smile and the sparkle in his eye. "You definitely gave me another chance to screw it up."

"Nah, you won't this time."

"Such faith."

"I'm serious. You'll figure it out."

Agitated, she scrubs at her face vigorously, forgets until a second too late about the mascara, and just resigns herself to looking like a racoon. "I lost another job."

"So, come work for me."

"No law degree, remember?"

"Study to be my paralegal. Hell, be my assistant. I could use your help around the office."

"Gus-"

"-I'm serious, Lexa. I've been waiting seven years for you to accept my offer. Please put me out of my misery."

"I…" Lexa stares helplessly into the sink.

Rent is coming due. She has no prospects, and her job taking band pictures has all but dried up for the moment. Her camera is currently gathering dust at the apartment. There is always the inheritance, but no. Not an option. It would spell the end of everything she's worked for.

"Come on." Gustus pushes off the counter and shuffles closer, moving into her space. "What's the worst that can happen?"

Lexa squeezes her eyes shut and breathes through her nose. "I screw up and you fire me."

"So, don't screw up."

"Is that your advice?" Lexa turns toward him with a face full of agony and ire. "Do you really think it's that simple? Do you think this is a joke?"

He doesn't so much as flinch. "I didn't say that."

"I didn't ask what you said, I asked what you think." Lexa takes a step forward. "Is that what you think? That I won't screw up? Just don't screw up, Lexa! Not like those 567 other times you screwed up! Just ignore all that and do it right this time!"

"You're being facetious."

"You're right! I am! Because screwing up isn't something I do for fun, Gustus! Screwing up isn't something I do because I'm too lazy or disaffected do things right! I hate getting fired all the time! I hate missing rent payments! I hate getting chewed out in front of my coworkers for missing shifts! It's just really hard to sell cameras or make sandwiches when I'm talking to myself because I haven't slept in three days!"

"So, we'll tackle those issues if they come up."

"You don't get it. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when . I will screw up. I am not reliable, and I don't want to strain this...relationship we have." Lexa gestures between them quickly, jaw clenched. "I don't want to mess it up."

Silence falls, and for several seconds, Gustus studies her carefully with an unreadable expression on his face. Finally, he sighs, backing up again to lean his weight against the counter.

"I think you need more than just a job. I think you need a purpose."

"What, like you? Like Indra?"

"Yeah. Something bigger than yourself to work toward."

"I can't even manage my own shit. How could I possibly manage anyone else's?"

"You'd be surprised."

"I really would."

"Just come work for me," he says, eyes pleading. "I'll give you flexible hours. I won't overload you with tasks you can't handle. Work what you can, and I'll pay you. Just please consider it."

Lexa deflates, lets the anger ebb and the fatigue roll in. "Okay, fine. I'll think about it."

"Thank you."

"I just don't wanna disappoint you, Gus." Lexa's voice sounds so tired now, it's like she's a different person. "That's all."

"What disappoints me is you hurting. I'm not saying this job will fix everything, but it might help, and that's all I care about. If it's not a good fit I'll let you move on, plain and simple."

Lexa folds her arms and frowns. Maybe that would be alright.

"Gustus!" Indra's voice carries down from the second floor. "Help!"

In a flash, both he and Lexa have raced out of the kitchen and rounded the corner, climbing the stairs to the second story in record time.

"In here!" Indra grabs them in the hallway and pulls them into the bathroom where Aden is sprawled in the tub, sweating and shaking.

"Withdrawals," Lexa concludes, with a glance, and Gustus grimaces beside her.

"Aden, you okay bud?"

"Obv-bv-viously not."

Gustus mutters something to himself and reaches into the linen cupboard on the other side of the old, free-standing porcelain sink. He yanks a blue bucket out from the bottom shelf and hands it to Aden.

"Use this, please. Try not to puke all over yourself."

Aden takes the bucket, looking decidedly green as his head thumps back against the tile.

Behind them, Indra frowns, knuckles white around the doorframe. "This came on very suddenly."

Lexa looks him over. "Wait, yeah, he was scarfing Cocoa Puffs 20 minutes ago."

Gustus's confusion seems to clear up as he realizes something. "Did you search his bag before you came over?"

Indra's eyes widen. "No."

"He got a bad batch," Lexa says darkly, and her stomach clenches. "Aden, what did you shoot and how much?"

He grits his teeth. "He-heroin, and not much."

"Don't lie to me."

He coughs and curls into himself, curls away from them, closes his eyes. "N-not much. I c-c-could only afford a little b-bit.."

"It must've been cut with something." Gustus strokes his beard and turns to Indra. "He'll have to ride it out."

"Shouldn't we take him to the hospital?"

Lexa shakes her head. "Not unless he starts to go in and out."

Indra looks vaguely horrified by the idea. "I think we should err on the side of caution."

"He's a minor, so they'll call his parents."

"F-f-fuck no!" Aden stammers, curling up tighter, sweat beading along his temple, staining the collar of his shirt. "It's f-fine. Just…" He lunges upright and reaches for the bucket, and everyone turns away as he takes a moment to retch up his sugary lunch.

"How about I keep a close eye on him," Gustus volunteers. "The second things go south I'll take him to Providence."

"Okay…" Indra glances sidelong at Lexa. "I would stay, but I'm needed at the office."

"It's fine. I have some cases to read over. I'll get nice and cozy here on the floor."

"I could...get some things at the store?" Lexa looks between them. "If you needed anything?"

"Pedialyte?" Gustus offers. "And Saltines."

"No problem."

"After that, you should spend some time going through his bag and look for anything we can flush."

In the tub, Aden retches again and the acrid stench of bile begins to percolate in the air.

"I can do that."

"I'm going now." Indra points to each of them with a stern glare set firmly on her face. "I want updates every hour. No, every half an hour."

"Every hour should be sufficient," Gustus replies, donning a thin smile. "You'll be the first to know if anything changes."

With an arched brow and a lingering glance, Indra stalks out of the bathroom and clomps down the stairs. The front door slams behind her moments later.

"Well!" Gustus claps his hands together and sighs. "Alright then. Great start to things, eh?"

"Totally." Lexa wrinkles her nose. "I'm going to the store."

"Oh, uh, grab me some beer, too, would ya? Something dark and local."

"Dark and local."

"Yeah. And maybe one of those plug-in air filters now that I think about it."

"Okay. You got it." Lexa heads out the door. "I'll be back."

/ / /

She drives to the Fred Meyer because she's not sure if New Seasons or Whole Foods is going to have something name brand like Pedialyte. She's assumed before and been wrong (because of course they'd have Tillamook brand ice cream, right?), so she doesn't feel like wasting her time. But when she gets to the store she parks and sits with the motor running for ten minutes, staring at the shiny foil covering her dashboard clock.

The temptation that rises almost throttles her, and Lexa tries to pretend that it's not a losing battle. She's in a hurry. She should just peel it off and get it over with, get on with her day. Just fucking look at it be done with it. Clarke's not gonna call back. It doesn't matter what time it is. Clarke's not gonna call back and it doesn't matter.

None of this fucking matters.

She's survived worse. She'll survive this, too. Maybe, with no attachments, she'll finally deliver herself into Nia's hands and end it once and for all. Maybe then she'll finally be even. Maybe then she'll finally be free of the guilt.

Lexa bites her tongue and chews.

The motor keeps running. The radio keeps playing. Some Smashing Pumpkins number that she recognizes from her childhood, from Echo's friends and their horrible house parties. Her fingers curl around the steering wheel and tighten like a vice.

Time is ticking.

Time doesn't matter.

It'll hurt, but everything hurts.

Everything fucking hurts.

Lexa sucks in a sharp breath and reaches out, rips the gum wrapper away. Her breath leaves her lungs in a whoosh. Her eyes flutter closed. Her head falls back against the seat.

1:13 PM

26 hours.

/ / /

 _10 Years Ago…_

"How do you know these people again?" Costia stands off to the side of a crowded living room, out of place in her favorite Abercrombie jacket, fingers curled in the crook of Lexa's elbow as she scans the room for a familiar face.

Lexa turns and leans into Costia's ear. "They're Echo's friends. I used to come here sometimes."

Costia licks her lips and Lexa notices. "When?"

"Before."

"Before us ?"

Lexa blushes and nods, glances away toward some kind of drug deal happening over the coffee table. The room isn't completely packed, but it's crowded and smoky, and the ripped, leather couches are crammed armrest to armrest with stoners and cokeheads bickering over the mountain of illicit drugs on the table between them. Costia shifts her weight again, leans further into Lexa's body seeking comfort.

She puts up a bold front, but Lexa knows better.

"Hey, fosters!" Echo emerges out of the crowd like Moses parting the Red Sea, two solo cups and an empty glass pipe in hand. "What's up, bitches? I brought you these!"

Lexa accepts the cups and rejects the pipe, glancing sidelong at Costia, who is trying really hard not to look completely out of her depth.

"No drugs tonight," Lexa cautions. "I'm on the wagon."

Echo quirks a brow and smirks. "What about her?" Her head rolls in Costia's direction, tilted to one side, tongue sliding over her canines. "You wanna get fucked up, honey?"

"None for her either," Lexa cuts in, shifting slightly in front of Costia. "She's got an athletic scholarship. Can't do drugs."

Costia nods her head just a little too eagerly and Echo leans away, twisted smirk evaporating off her cherry lips like water off a hot pan.

"Suit yourself." She shrugs with one shoulder. "You know I just cook 'em, personally."

"Yeah. Still, though?"

"Small batches here and there." Echo shrugs again. "Student loans, kiddies. Chem degrees are expensive."

"Hence the athletic scholarship," Costia adds, smiling nervously.

Echo levels a bored glance in her direction. "Something tells me you aren't really hard up for money, sunshine." Her eyes slide south to the fingers clinging to Lexa's arm, then back up to Lexa's face, shimmering with dark intent. "So, Lexa, Ruby and Stacy will be pretty disappointed to know that you're off the market."

Costia frowns in confusion, turns into Lexa's side. "Who are Ruby and Stacy?"

Lexa grits her teeth and keeps her steely gaze fixed on Echo's. "You promised."

Echo almost looks contrite. "I did, didn't I."

"You _promised_."

"The world breaks promises, Woods. Fun fact."

"Yeah, but friends aren't supposed to."

"Is that what you think?" Echo throws her head back and laughs. She punches Lexa's shoulder as she moves to pass. "That's a bold strategy, Cotton!"

She disappears back into the crowd much the same way she emerged from it, and Lexa is left glowering, gripping the solo cup tight in her free hand. So maybe she was a bit presumptuous. Maybe just a bit.

Costia runs her fingers up Lexa's bare arm. "Who was she talking about?"

Lexa lifts her solo cup and throws back what appears to be vodka.

Yep. Vodka.

"You gonna drink that?"

Costia peers down into her cup of pure alcohol and wordlessly hands it over. With a straight face, Lexa throws that back as well, savors the burn and the immediate rush, the buzz that starts to roll outward in her chest. She'll need that and more for the conversation they're about to have. She swallows her dread.

Honesty is the best policy.

Honesty is the best policy.

Honesty is the best...

The sound of glass shattering brings her attention to the center of the room where a fight has broken out over the mountain of drugs on the coffee table. Two girls in mini skirts, hoop earrings, and painted on tops are grappling with each other, fingernails clawing, hands tearing at long hair. The guys on the couch are hollering and egging them on.

Costia's lip curls in disgust.

"Maybe we should go somewhere a little quieter," Lexa suggests, and Costia shrugs, but Lexa can read the relief on her face.

This isn't Costia's scene at all. What the hell was she thinking bringing her here ?

Lexa takes Costia's hand in her own and shoulders through the crowd toward the stairs, but it's packed in the hallway and slow going. The ranks don't part so easily like they did for Echo, bringer of drugs, conductor of chemical debauchery. They're a little young to be here. Lexa always passed for a college kid when she came alone, with her shredded hipster clothes and her hard face, but Costia looks 18 on the nose, every bit the unblemished St. Mary's protege her parents raised her to be. She's good and she's strong, and she has no sharp edges, no emotional wounds, no yawning holes to fill. Costia wears her pride for all to see, straight-backed, unflinching, and it's beautiful, almost virginal, unblemished by the claws of despair and hatred. She shines as she moves through the dark house, like a bright star against the night sky, and it serves as a sudden reminder that everything Costia knows of the darkness is Lexa's . Lexa is the one pulling back the curtain on humanity.

The thought makes her mouth taste like ash.

They hit a bit of resistance at the foot of the stairs, a piece of shit named Brayden and his merry band of meth-mouthed, shoplifting goons. Lexa rolls her eyes, because face tattoos are not, and never will be, a good look, and these assholes have been banned from the house on three separate occasions only to slink back into the next party. Jarred, a lanky guy with slouched posture and baggy jeans, leers at them and makes a lewd gesture with his fingers. Costia's grips tightens on hers, and Lexa wants to punch him square in his stupid pierced-up face

She practically drags Costia up the stairs.

"Oh, my god," Costia runs her fingers through her hair in the dark hallway as Lexa checks rooms for occupants. "That was a little…"

"In here."

Lexa grabs her by the sleeve and pulls her into a stuffy bedroom. It's cleaner than the others, just a frameless bed in the corner, a desk, and a small dresser, but the smell of weed and essential oils is strong, almost overpowering. Lexa crosses the room and heaves the old windowpane up. Cold air floods the space in seconds, bringing with it the smell of pine and cigarette smoke from the front porch. Lexa pulls her bomber jacket a little tighter around her shoulders.

Costia peers around the room, expression unreadable. "Is this the part where we have reckless party sex on a stranger's bed?"

"In a minute." Lexa's lips quirk, and she notes the slight buzz taking hold, bolstering her confidence. "I thought I should tell you about Ruby and Stacy first."

"Oh." Costia's eyes shift toward Lexa's again, curious. "Whatever you're about to tell me, I'm not going to like it, am I?"

Lexa bites her lip.

"Maybe you should just keep it to yourself."

"If that's what you want."

Costia groans and looks out the window through the dirty, bent up blinds. "I don't know what I want."

Lexa shifts, sticks her hands in her pockets, toes at a stain on the carpet. She doesn't know either.

"I want to know about your past." Costia says honestly. "I do . It's just…"

"...My past sucks?"

"Yeah, it- It does." Costia steps closer to the window. "But it's like, the more I learn the angrier I get." She blinks, and suddenly Lexa sees a wet shimmer in her clear brown eyes. "I have all these questions I can't answer. Like, how can people be so awful? How can people be so cruel?" Costia's gaze flicks to hers and Lexa's heart leaps painfully in her chest. "How can anyone hurt a child?"

"Hey," Lexa reaches out, slides her hand along Costia's arm, laces their fingers together. "It's okay. It's just past shit. Nothing you need to know."

Costia watches her thumb caress Lexa's skin. "I guess not. It's just… Echo made me feel like an idiot."

"Echo always does that. It's a power thing."

"Why do you like her?"

"'Like' is a strong word." Lexa presses closer into Costia's space, head a little lighter now, vision a little fuzzier around the edges. "I would call us friends of convenience. We knew each other through my last home. She's good if you're looking for drugs or parties." Lexa drops her forehead onto Costia's shoulder. "Echo was one of the only ones who didn't go to jail because of me."

"It wasn't because of you."

Lexa shrugs.

"Hey," Costia lifts her chin with kind fingers, "it wasn't you . They went to prison because they were criminals."

"I know."

"Do you, though?" Costia leans their heads together, brings her hands up to cup Lexa's somber face. "Lexa. It wasn't your fault."

"I know."

"I wish you did."

"I do."

Costia closes the gap and kisses her, and Lexa just drops the facade, loses herself in it, loses her resistance in it, because Costia always kisses her like she's the last source of cool water in a vast desert, and it's incredible.

It's such a high to be wanted.

It's such a rush to be craved.

Better than any fleeting high. Higher than any loose fuck. Lexa kisses back harder. Lexa pushes the boundaries harder. Lexa presses her tongue into Costia's mouth, slides her hands up Costia's shirt. Lexa bites when Costia whimpers and growls when Costia moans. She's panting in less than a minute. She's sweating in under the three. And the room could be practically arctic, it wouldn't matter, Lexa's body would still be on fire. She'd still be burning up. She'd still be shucking off her jacket and stripping off her shirt. She'd still be tearing at the roots of Costia's hair and husking breathless demands in Costia's ear.

She'd still be out of control. She's out of control for this girl. She doesn't care if it burns her. She'll throw her caution and her baggage and every doubt she's ever had to the wind because Costia's worth it. Costia's worth everything.

Lexa grins into Costia's mouth, feral, desperate, and hungry.

"I'm going to fuck you in a stranger's room."

Costia's knees buckle, and they tumble down together on the floor, scrabble on hands and knees toward the mattress, lips separating for only the briefest, most necessary moments. Even those moments feel endless. Ravenous mouths, ravenous lips. Even those necessary moments hurt.

"I can't believe I want you to fuck me in a stranger's room."

Lexa laughs and sinks her teeth into Costia's shoulder, makes it count. "I can't wait to find out what else you want me to do to you."

This time Costia gasps, and there's an entire symphony in that gasp, a veritable work of modern art in that gasp. It boils Lexa's blood and fills Lexa's rib cage and puts the scent of blood in Lexa's nose. She's got a fire in her heart and lightning in her fingers, and she needs to taste Costia's sweat on her tongue.

Costia's jeans are unzipped and half-stripped in seconds, Costia's legs splayed as far as she can stretch them with denim around her knees, pushing with desperate, helping hands, a heaving chest, muttered assurances, urgencies, proclamations of sheer disbelief. Lexa thrusts in fast with two fingers and hooks them in deep, makes Costia's thighs shiver and shake. She pumps quick and hard because they're off the rails already and neither of them can wait. Costia grips Lexa like she's the last solid thing in the world, and it's so desperate, it's pure emotion, it's pure ecstasy. Lexa is higher than she's been in her entire life and she keeps driving forward relentlessly, keeps driving like she'll never come down.

She makes up her mind right then and there.

This is what heaven feels like.

And that's when the bedroom door opens.

It takes her a moment, honestly. It takes her a solid moment to recognize the sound of intrusion, but Costia sees what Lexa can't with her back turned, and it's Costia's eyes, widening in fear, that jolt Lexa into action. She pulls out and rolls just in time to miss the first slash of the knife.

Costia screams and scrambles backward on the bed, kicking up blankets and pillows in her wake, struggling to shimmy back into her pants as Lexa springs to her feet, shirtless and unarmed, breathing like she's just run a mile.

"Hello, Lexa."

It's Ontari, grinning like some kind of terrible, feral ghost resurrected from Lexa's past, kitchen knife glinting dully in the faint light filtering in from outside. She's taller and thinner through the cheeks, none of the adolescent roundness left in her face. Her dark hair is shorter and her hard eyes are harder, and everything about her seems dangerous, sharpened like a blade against the whetstone of prison's undeniable cruelties. Her glare burns into Lexa with a pure, unflinching loathing that Lexa hasn't seen in years, and its return is distinctly painful, an old wound reopened, fresh stitches torn out. Ontari's lips flinch and curve up in apparent delight at the myriad of confused emotions playing on Lexa's face.

"Long time no see, huh?" Ontari laughs a bit shrilly, a bit breathlessly. "Who's the bitch?"

Lexa shakes off her surprise, drops into a fighting stance, and balls her fists. "None of your fucking business."

Ontari twirls the knife, eyes narrowing. "Whatever. Echo will tell me later."

They circle each other slowly.

"You're supposed to be in prison."

"Out on a technicality. Nia's got good lawyers." Ontaria flashes a snarling grin, cocks her head smoothly to one side like a curious snake. "Must've missed all your care packages back in Juvenile Detention."

"That why you're feeling so stabby today?"

Ontari barks a laugh. "I've got a whole list of reasons, Lexie. Wanna hear 'em? They're alphabetized."

Lexa grits her teeth. "Not really."

"Yeah, me niether. Let's just skip to the part where I gut you in front of your date."

Ontari lunges and slices diagonally with the knife, but she's angry and she's sloppy, telegraphing her move a split second ahead of time. Lexa is ready for the strike when it comes. She jumps back and swings down with locked fists, knocking the knife to the ground. It clatters onto the hard carpet and she kicks it away with her boot.

"Bitch!"

Ontari lands the next three hits in quick succession, hard punches to the jaw, chest, and neck. Reeling, Lexa staggers as she struggles to find footing, and Ontari sweeps her legs out with a bruising kick to the knees.

"Lexa!"

"Costia, stay back!"

Lexa dives past another kick and rolls to her feet, and Ontari whirls around with murder in her eyes, throwing punches as fast as Lexa can block them. Prison has hardened her. Made her vicious. Thinking quickly, calling Roan's backyard sparring lessons to mind, Lexa reverts to old patterns, to the only plan that ever worked against Ontari's then superior size and strength. She starts to use Ontari's passion against her.

It's easy enough to do, duck, weave, dodge, tire her out, get her to over commit then jab with quick strikes to the head and torso. They circle the room like this for almost a minute, strikes and counterstrikes, grappling and shoving, equally matched now in strength, but not cunning. Ontari's energy is already waning, her fury already blurring her judgement. Lexa knows she has the edge.

She puts all her strength into the first clean hit she can land, nailing Ontari hard in the left temple. It's more than enough to sink her. Ontari's body crashes to the floor, completely limp, and Lexa stands over her triumphant, bloodied and breathing hard, crouched low in a defensive position. With her heart pounding in her ears, she half expects Ontari to get back up, to take another swing, but she doesn't move again, and Lexa finally drops her fists and straightens up.

Behind her, Costia shifts along the wall, breathing raggedly. "W-what just happened? Who was that? Why did she attack you?"

Lexa turns from the carnage with a face of stone, and meets Costia's fear-blown eyes with a steely gaze. "Costia, meet my old foster sister, Ontari."

Costia's throat bobs.

"How much did the caseworker actually tell you about my last home?"

/ / /

 _Present Day …_

 _._

" _Hey, this is Lexa. I can't answer the phone right now. You know what to do_ …-"

"- _Hey, Lexa, this is Raven, Clarke's friend. Anyway, I'm just calling to let you know that everything's okay. She's staying with me for a few days while she sorts out some personal issues. She's not like, breaking up with you or anything… Anyway, I'm sort of monitoring her phone, so if any emergencies come up I'll let her know. Thanks_ …-"

.

/ / /

Anya answers her front door looking about as unimpressed as she possibly can. Her hair is wild and her makeup is dark, and she's dressed to go out in all black; black boots, black denim, black t-shirt, scarf, and jacket.

"You came here unannounced," she gives Lexa a scathing once over, "looking like that."

Lexa glares and taps her fingers restlessly against her thighs. "Clarke hasn't returned my calls in two days."

Anya's iron gaze immediately softens. "Come in. I'll order something."

Lexa steps through the door into Anya's studio apartment and looks around at the familiar furniture, the familiar clothes, breathes in the familiar scent. It's not enough, but it's a start. It's better than sitting in her place, rocking back and forth, staring at the wall.

"I have to cancel my playdate," Anya says nonchalantly, pulling out her phone. "Just give me a second."

Lexa stuffs her hands in her back pockets and nods. She doesn't move from the doorway, just stands and waits while Anya dials and places a call, while Anya holds a hushed argument and jabs her finger against the screen to hang up. Her cousin takes no shit from anyone. Her cousin is a beautiful warrior. Lexa can't even count the number of times she has cowered behind Anya's shield, and never in her whole life has she been more grateful for her cousin's consideration than she is now.

"You gonna come in or what?" Anya tosses her keys back into the key bowl by the door.

Lexa squirms and sticks her hands in her jacket pockets. "Anh… thanks."

"You're welcome." Anya shrugs. "It's no big deal."

"It's a huge deal, actually." Lexa looks up from the floor. "You know I love you, right?"

Anya wrinkles her nose, but it's obvious when her cousin is trying to hide her feelings. She always looks angrier for a minute, harsher, like she's pulling out the stops on every defense she can think of just to keep her invading emotions from the flooding the castle. Lexa decides to have mercy on her. She reaches out and punches Anya's shoulder.

"Let's get Thai."

Anya shakes her shoulders out and recovers quickly. "I picked up a new video game. Haven't played it yet."

"Which one?"

"Uncharted 4. You wanna go first?"

"No, thanks." Lexa smiles a bit and shakes her head. "Can I just watch you for a while?"

Anya frowns. "You never turn down first play."

"I can't focus on anything right now. I just need something to help get my mind off Clarke."

"So, you admit that you're obsessing."

Tears spring into Lexa's eyes like she's Pavlov's fucking dog or something, and jesus christ , will she ever stop crying over Clarke? She's been a veritable faucet for almost three months. It's getting absurd.

"I'm obsessing," she rasps. "My head is out of control, Anya…"

Her cousin's expression twists. "I know, Lex."

"Anya…"

Lexa's face falls. She's crumpling inward. She's imploding fast. It takes a firm hand on her elbow to pull her back.

"I'm ordering food and we're firing up that game. Do you have your meds?"

Lexa heaves an anemic sob, and nods.

"Okay. Come sit with me on the couch and tell me what you want to eat. It's gonna be okay."

Lexa lets herself be led into the apartment, lets herself believe Anya's generic assurances.

No matter what, Anya will always be there.

Even when Lexa isn't.

/ / /

* * *

A/N: Thanks for reading! What do you think?

Again, find me at aeschylusrex on tumblr


	9. Slice 7

_6.12.16_

 _Hi guys! Shorter chapter this time I think, but I've got two more coming on its heels, so don't despair!_

 _Enjoy~_

* * *

 _I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair._

 _Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets._

 _-Pablo Neruda_

 **9.**

It's a voice that wakes her first. A familiar voice. Anya's voice.

Lexa shifts and blinks through the gloom. It's still dark in the apartment. Is it early or late? She goes to check her wristwatch for the time before she remembers that it's gone, chucked somewhere in her disaster of a bedroom.

"I know… I know… yeah, I know what time it is."

Lexa rolls onto her back and rubs her eyes roughly. She's still so incredibly tired. So incredibly groggy. The clock on Anya's bedside table says 6:30 AM. What the hell is she doing up?

"Just put her on the phone… Because it's an emergency… No, I'm not making this up. What did you say your name was? Okay...whatever, just put her on, please."

She hears footsteps then, bare feet, smacking quietly against the linoleum tile around the corner in the kitchen. Anya is pacing, and she's talking to someone in a low tone, a tone Lexa probably isn't meant to overhear.

"Hi… yeah, it's Anya. I know… no, no, nothing like that… just two things. I'll keep it short." Anya pauses for a moment. " Okay. First, I need to know how much longer you're gonna do this." The footsteps circle the kitchen again. "Yeah… fair... No, I get it. But, second, you should know that it's really messing her up. You need to at least talk to her and tell her what's going on."

Lexa rubs her eyes again, her heavy, heavy eyes. She's intrigued. She's curious, but she's falling back asleep. She tries to pry them open again. It's not really working. She's losing bits of the conversation. Anya's words are fading in and out, running together, a stream of low, musical sounds.

"She's asleep, finally… You know how she is… I don't know. She showed up here last night all freaked out."

Her. Anya's talking about _her_. Lexa's eyelids flutter. The bed is so soft and warm it's like she's sinking. Her senses begin to fall away.

"...I think you should just tell her yourself. She'll understand… No, she just wants to see you… Yeah…I have to head to work, actually, but I'll leave you a key under the mat. Do you have my address? ...I'll text it to you… Okay, sure… Thanks, Clarke."

Lexa's eyes snap wide open.

Clarke?

/ / /

 _8 Years Ago…_

It's unclear what brings it on. It could be the toddler screaming in the parking lot. It could be the crushing weight of the August sun, bearing down from a cloudless, blue sky. Honestly, it could be any number of things, but that's beside the point. Lexa barely has time to stumble into a Nike outlet store before she's tumbling to the ground, and that's the real problem. That's her only real concern.

The linoleum floor is slick and cold. The fluorescent lights are stark white and too bright. Her hands splay out to catch weight. Her knees burns where they drag. It's another sensation to add to the mounting pile of things she can't process.

Lexa can't _breathe_.

Her lungs are working harder every minute, like she's sprinting for her life, like she's running out of oxygen in an airlock. She grasps at her face where she's starting to lose feeling. Her fingers and her toes are already tingling. The large room is spinning. She's crying by the time the cashier rushes over to her, kneels on the ground in a polo and spotless running shoes. The words he utters are incoherent. They don't make any sense.

Lexa just shakes her head, keeps shaking her head.

The room is spinning. The room is so bright. The cashier is calling his manager at the desk phone. Lexa feels like she's dying. Her heart is hammering so hard that's it going to burst in her chest, fill her lungs with blood, and drown her. This is what dying feels like.

"I'm calling an ambulance," a woman says, the manager maybe. It's hard to tell. "Stay with her."

The manager sounds panicked. She sounds scared. The boy in the polo returns and puts a heavy hand on her shoulder. Lexa keeps wheezing, keeps sobbing. The lights get harsher and her vision gets darker. There are people watching now from a distance. She sees them standing in a loose ring, whispering and murmuring. Their eyes burn her skin away until she's exposed flesh, aching, bleeding, stinging from the slightest breeze. The world scalds her, hurts her.

Lexa is too dizzy to sit upright so she falls back against the cold, hard floor. No reservations today about the dirt, the footprints, the grime. The paramedics are asking her questions and she's just fading, drifting, nauseous, sick and terrified.

Anya.

Anya will have to know. Anya will have to know before it's too late. She tries to reach for her phone, but her fingers are all numb and twisted, like claws, like hooks, and she can't seem to get them in her pocket. The paramedics are shining something in her face. They are lifting her up. They are strapping her down, and suddenly she is floating. Suddenly all she sees is Costia's pale face, obscured by the oxygen mask and the neck brace, disappearing behind the doors of a red ambulance.

It's the last thing she sees before they take her away.

It's first thing she sees every night when she falls asleep.

/ / /

"This isn't the first time," Anya says, when the doctor comes.

He's a slight man of Indian descent, wearing a long white lab coat over blue scrubs, a stethoscope draped around his neck, a bulky clipboard in hand. He looks so much like the doctors on tv that Lexa wonders if this is just script, something happening to someone else. The drugs have left her in a strange, emotionless haze, detached, unaffected. Everything feels far away.

She peers blearily at the IV tubes taped into her skin, at the plastic band around her wrist. Her forearms look much smaller than she remembers, the way her muscles pop out when she flexes, it's all wrong. It's kind of skeletal.

She should probably feel some way about it, but she doesn't really feel anything.

"Now, she was dehydrated, and her vitamin levels were low, but it was a particularly powerful panic attack, regardless." The doctor glances at her, and he seems concerned about something. Lexa wonders if it's her. "You say this isn't the first time she's lost consciousness in a public place?"

"No. She collapsed in one of the park blocks that run through the Portland State campus earlier this year."

"She's a student there?"

"Yes."

The doctor nods like this is valuable information. Who knows? Maybe it is.

"I would like to order a psych consult for her. Has been treated for these attacks before?"

Anya purses her lips. Lexa turns away and finds something else to look at, to focus on, anything to take her attention away. The window next to her bed is dark, but the city lights glimmer through the trees.

It's a lonely sight.

She experiences a sudden desire to fold her arms tight across her chest, to curl up and protect herself from the harsh, sterile scent of the hospital room, from the questions that dig too far under her skin. These doctors always mean well. It's just…

"Her um," Anya stumbles over the words, "her foster parents did a few years back. For anxiety. She wasn't sleeping."

The doctor scribbles this information down on his clipboard. "Unless you object, I would like to have her do a psych eval before she leaves."

Anya glances at Lexa, who keeps her eyes turned away, who refuses to look.

"That would be fine."

The doctor nods. "Excellent. I'll get that queued up and you should see someone within the hour."

He leaves the room in a hurry, just a swish of his white lab coat around the corner and out into the hallway.

Anya takes Lexa's hand, and holds it until the nurse comes in to check her vitals.

/ / /

 _Present Day..._

For the second time in 10 hours, Anya looks extremely unimpressed with her. She's a lot softer this morning, face scrubbed clean, hair pulled up into a bun, wearing flannel pajama bottoms and a white tank top instead of black on black, but her expression is still sharp, and her irritation is palpable. Lexa has thrown off the covers and set to pacing the length of the studio apartment, arms crossed, shoulders hunched, sniffling pitifully whenever she pauses to rub at her dry, sore eyes. She's wearing Anya's red basketball shorts, some shirt she doesn't remember putting on, and a forgotten hoodie that smells flowery and sweet like Clarke, unzipped and hanging open, draped over her knuckles because it's a size too big. Because Lexa's taller, but Clarke is broad where Lexa is lean.

"Get back in bed," Anya snaps. "I won't say it again."

"Can't sleep."

"You were dead asleep five minutes ago."

Lexa shivers against the cold. "Clarke's coming over."

"Ah." Anya rolls her eyes and flops down on the couch. "So, you heard."

Lexa just shrugs. She can't stop moving. Her body is a bundle of loosely confederated nerves and needs right now, and she feels like a corpse reanimated. The energy is all consuming. It's not really under her control.

"She's taking over for me." Anya's head lolls back and she peers up at the exposed ventilation ducts running across the ceiling. "I have to go to work, and you're a mess. I'm not leaving you alone."

"I'm always a mess. What's the difference if I'm alone or not?"

"Okay, this shit." Anya waves a finger at her. "This shit right here is what I'm worried about."

Lexa's jaw tightens. "I know. You've said."

"Lexa- oh, jesus christ." Anya groans and rubs her hands over her face. "We need to talk about Clarke, but I am way too fucking tired to have this conversation right now."

"Please, don't strain yourself."

"No rest for the wicked."

"Clearly."

"Look, I've said this before. You're obsessing. It's unhealthy."

"I know, okay?" Lexa shakes her head, feels the agitation crawl under her skin. "I know."

Anya's eyes follow her as she paces the length of the room. "I'm not convinced it's actually sunk in. It seemed like you were doing better until you started dating Clarke. Now it's like you're back to before, on the edge of a nervous breakdown."

Lexa throws up her hands in exasperation and immediately crosses her arms again."Pretty much everything I do is unhealthy. It's not such a great mental leap to assume that Clarke's included in that."

"Jesus, stop pulling the mental illness card."

"It's not a card."

"Yeah, but you use it like one. It's an excuse for everything that's wrong with your life. Has been for nearly a decade." Anya flicks her wrist, levels a bored expression at Lexa's back. "It's getting real old."

"You know what else is getting real old? Being mentally ill."

"Mental illness doesn't exist in a vacuum, Lex. Take some responsibility for your health. Your bad habits only exacerbate the problem."

"And what the hell would _you_ know about it?" Lexa snipes back, angry now, a smouldering coal reignited and flaring bright.

She drags her fingers roughly through her hair, paces with increased fervor.

Paces to the wall. Turns.

Paces to the door. Turns.

Her glare carves grooves into the polished concrete floor.

"What would _I_ know about it?" Anya scoffs and leans forward, eyes narrowing into deadly slits. "Did you forget whose apartment you lived in for four years? Who was that Lexa? Huh?"

Lexa just shakes her head, like she can't hear it, like it'll all stop, like she won't have to face Anya's words if she just keeps walking in circles. She wants to put her hands over her ears. She almost fucking does.

"Who came to get you when Indra found you under that bridge? Who took you to rehab to get cleaned up? Who dragged you to class after all your benders so you wouldn't flunk out of college? Was it Santa Claus? Was it Jesus?"

"Stop, Anya-"

"-No!" Anya grips the armrest until her knuckles turn white, snarling across the tiny space. Lexa's steps falter. "I've spent _years_ of my life trying to keep you from _ruining_ yourself! By now I think I know an excuse when I see one! It's self-sabotage, Lexa! Straight up! I've read the books and I've sat in your sessions, and I've spent years memorizing your triggers, listening to your nightmares- I know the fucking difference! So, how about _you_ tell _me_! What would I fucking know about it?!"

Lexa jerks, shudders, hears the jagged fear creeping into Anya's voice, the fear that they'll always just go around like this again, that they'll never be free of this. That Lexa will never shake her demons.

She tugs at the front of her shirt, stretches the fabric over her knuckles.

Because… Yes.

How many time's the charm? What's the definition of insanity? Doing the same things over and over again, hoping for different results? What result is she hoping for? What end is she driving at? Why does she always feel like happiness is just out of her reach when really she's always actively pushing it away? Maybe her guilt is the answer, is the truth. What she deserves. What she doesn't deserve. The sins she must pay for, the blood on her hands. If the world won't punish her, she'll punish herself, because someone has to do it. Someone has to make her pay. The debt she owes is too large to forgive. Maybe, deep down, she knows that she'll never be even.

Clarke's words echo in her head.

Not crazy.

Self-destructive.

Lexa wobbles and falls back against the bed, limp, numb, tired. She blinks slowly, feels like she's sprinted a mile. It's been days since she really slept. It's been years since Anya really yelled.

Anya rises from the couch and turns away. Her movements are jerky, unsteady. "I have to get ready for work."

Lexa stares blearily at the ducting and vents snaking across the ceiling. "I'm sorry."

"You're always sorry."

Her head jerks up as Anya rips open the closet door and starts rifling through her clothes. Her shoulders are hunched. The clock on the bedside table reads almost seven. She'll be late.

"What else am I supposed to say?"

"Stop apologizing." Anya strips her tank top off over her head and reaches for a bra. "Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Stop making excuses."

"They're not excuses."

"Please. There are people who run marathons with two amputated legs. Can you honestly look at them and tell me you have no control over your situation?"

Lexa flops back again and squints up at some dusty cobwebs, gossamer filaments suspended in a sticky, silky tangle between a pair of black, pvc pipes. "That's totally different."

"Look," Anya huffs, reaching around to fasten the metal hooks, "it's like my Bible-spewing mother always says, everyone has their cross to bear. _Everyone_ has shit to deal with. So deal with it."

"I'm trying, okay?"

"And yet you still have this helpless, kicked puppy attitude with Clarke. Do you actually want to keep her?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Anya rolls her eyes. "Christ, you're so dense sometimes."

"Well, cut it out with the loaded questions!"

"You told me two days ago that you love her. Are you willing to do what it takes to keep her?"

Lexa opens her mouth, irate, indignant, ready to push back with a passionate, resounding "yes!" But she doesn't. Her mouth clicks shut and her chest tightens, because she can't lie to Anya about the doubts. There are so, _so_ many of them.

"I'm trying. I just… People like me don't really get to be happy." Lexa's voice shakes. She feels vaguely nauseous. "The things I did… I don't really deserve it."

"Yeah? Well, Clarke does, and you make Clarke happy. Stop punishing her for loving you."

Lexa's throat bobs.

"You have a choice to make." Anya pulls a black polo shirt over her head and straightens the collar. "Stop acting like you're the only person who's ever made mistakes. Stop blaming yourself for shit that wasn't your fault. Stop pretending like you have no control over your mental health. You're not a lost cause, Lexa." Anya drops her flannel pajama bottoms and steps into a pair of slim, black trousers. "After everything you've been through, you deserve to happy."

"I just… I don't wanna hurt Clarke."

"So don't." Anya glances over her shoulder, glares pointedly. "Do right by her. Let yourself be happy again."

Lexa groans and rubs her temples. "I don't know what she sees in me."

"Who knows. Figure it out. She wouldn't stick around if you were a total loser, because you're a stubborn dickhead half the time."

Lexa lets her eyes close, feels the weight of fatigue settle like lead in her bones. "You flatter me."

"Whatever. All I'm saying is be the best you can be, and all that inspirational Walgreen's calendar shit." Anya tugs on some thick socks and a pair of boots, black, of course. "Do whatever you have to do. Just don't hurt Clarke because you were too busy feeling guilty about the past to take care of her."

"What if she's better off without me?"

Anya rolls her eyes so hard Lexa's afraid they might fall out. "I think we both know you don't actually want her to leave you."

Definitely, _definitely_ not. Lexa pales and shudders at the suggestion.

"Yeah. So, shape up, bud. If you don't try to earn her? Clarke has no obligation to stay."

"Ugh… Fuck."

Anya reaches up to swap out her earrings in the full length closet mirror. "What?"

"...You're right."

Her fingers fumble with the tiny metal prongs on a pair of matte grey studs. "I don't bother unless I am. Too much effort."

"Aden basically said the same thing to me and I didn't listen to him."

"Who the fuck is Aden?"

"That kid I told you about. The homeless teenager."

Anya snorts. "Oh, right. Well, who doesn't take advice from homeless teenagers?"

Lexa's lips twitch. "I'm sorry I crashed last night."

"God, for the last fucking time, stop apologizing." Anya disappears into the bathroom and Lexa hears the medicine cabinet clicking open, clicking shut, hears the water running, hears toothbrush bristles scraping over teeth. "We're family. That's what I'm here for."

"Well, thanks anyway." Lexa curls her fingers inside her sleeves. "I don't know what I would've done without you all these years."

Anya doesn't respond, and Lexa doesn't push. They both know the answer, just like Lexa knows the exact distance, in feet and meters, between the apex of the Freemont Bridge and the swirling waters of the Willamette River. It's not worth bringing up.

Some things are better left unsaid.

A soft knock at the front door brings their conversation to halt, regardless.

Anya steps out of the bathroom with a plastic toothbrush handle hanging from her mouth. She glances to the door and then to Lexa, sprawled across the mattress like some pitiful human mess. She _is_ a mess, actually. That's accurate.

"Looks like your date is here."

Lexa covers her eyes with her sleeve.

"You gonna answer or what?"

Clarke knocks again and her cousin's glare softens into a smirk.

"What the fuck did we just talk about? Get up." Anya spins on her heels and stalks away. "She won't wait forever."

Lexa sighs.

Fucking…

God damnit, it shouldn't be this hard.

She sucks in a deep breath and peels her body off the sheets. Anya shuts the bathroom door.

/ / /

 _8 Years Ago…_

"Get up! You're gonna be late for class!"

Anya wrenches the curtains open and Lexa recoils, hissing like a vampire as she struggles to pull the covers over her face.

"Come on, get up!" Anya shoves at her legs. "Get up or your professor's gonna fail you. Get UP!"

Lexa groans, but she rolls off her frameless mattress straight onto the floor, face down on the carpet. She feels wretched. She feels like death warmed over. Everything hurts everywhere. She rubs uselessly at her swollen eyes. There are a couple of cold spoons in the refrigerator for mornings like these.

They're really gonna come in handy.

"You smell like tequila and wet cigarette butts." Anya kicks away a bottle. "Oh, _look_. Hypothesis confirmed."

Lexa makes a horrible gagging noise in the back of her throat and a bucket clatters next to her head. She reaches for it without a second thought.

While she's retching, Anya glares around at the state of the room. Lexa catches a glimpse of her expression over the blue, plastic rim and nearly recoils. Her cousin's lean face is a mask of dark fury, bloodless lips pressed tight, eyes narrowed into reptilian slits. It's enough to make Lexa tremble, to make her feel sick all over again. Anya's been in thunderous moods before, of course. Aunt Catherine is a piece of work so family dinners are never easy, and obviously Lexa's done plenty of stupid things to earn Anya's scorn, passing out under dumpsters and puking in Ubers least among them.

But this...

This is wholly different.

The expression on Anya's face is pinched and seething. Fresh and terrible. It's a rage born of anxious, deep-rooted love, and Lexa knows it on sight because she's been there before, but on Anya it looks so strange. Anya never lets herself get to this point, doesn't have the will to care about anything that would cause her this much pain. She slips into apathy like her favorite old sweater, and she casts off people like old junk cluttering her closet. Nothing slows her rolls. Nothing rattles her chain.

Except with Lexa, it doesn't matter. With Lexa all bets are off.

Anya can't make herself stop caring for Lexa, and now they're here, splintering, and Anya is so, incredibly fed up.

It's horrible, Lexa thinks suddenly, how much love can warp a person, like metal twisting into shrapnel, something bright and clean rendered filthy and jagged.

It's a weapon now, Anya's love. Lexa will relish its edges.

"This is the last time I do this for you."

Lexa gags and spits into the bucket.

"Next time you're on your own. You flunk out of school? Your fucking problem."

Bile creeps up the back of Lexa's throat. She spits again.

Anya kicks the wastebasket next to the door, notes the brittle clinking of glass with sharp curl of her lip. "It's disgusting in here." She turns to Lexa, languishing in a ball on the carpet, and there is no mercy on her face. "You have 30 minutes to get yourself decent, and then I'm hauling your ass up to campus, got it? I don't care if you still have vomit on your fucking shirt, I'm shoving you in the motherfucking car, so you better be ready."

From her place on the floor, Lexa covers her eyes, croaks out, "thanks, Anh," and sits up to stick her head back in the bucket.

"This is the last time, okay? I'm serious."

Lexa nods, swallows the saliva pooling in her mouth. It's as thick and viscous as Elmer's glue.

"Oh, and by the way, you're cleaning this disgusting room, because it smells like fucking _despair_ in here."

Tears cloud Lexa's eyes. She sniffs and wipes her nose on the back of a sticky hand. She has no idea why it's sticky. She tries not to think about it.

It could be anything, at this point.

She doesn't even remember getting to the bar.

From somewhere nearby, Lexa hears Anya sigh, and then her hair is being swept back out of her face. Her cheeks are wet and dripping now, tears sliding off her chin, down her neck.

"You're not seriously crying."

Lexa sits back and folds her arms on her knees, lets her head fall forward. "How did I get home last night?"

"Some guy dropped you off." Anya's curt tone grabs a new edge, a note of concern. "Did you fuck him?"

"I don't know," Lexa whispers, dragging her head this way and that along her forearms to wipe her eyes. "I can't remember."

"...You can't go on like this. It's dangerous."

Lexa sniffs. The tears pour out faster. She doesn't even know where the moisture is coming from. She's so dehydrated.

"Tell me what to do."

Anya rubs Lexa's back, and it feels, in that moment, like the kindest gesture Lexa's ever received. It makes her shoulders shake.

"You can't fail this class."

Lexa nods.

"We'll talk about the rest later."

Lexa nods again. She has no words to make this okay.

Anya's hand pauses on the nape of Lexa's nape. A few seconds pass, and then she crouches down and sits, cross legged next to Lexa on the floor. She pushes the bucket away.

"It's not like I don't know you're suffering."

"I know."

"I didn't mean to yell."

Lexa takes a stuttering breath. "It's fine. Thanks for waking me up."

Anya sighs. "I've been doing some reading on stuff. Like PTSD and panic attacks. The doctor at OHSU said you should be seeing someone about it."

Lexa's chin quivers. "...I can't."

Anya combs Lexa's wild hair back and tucks it over her ear. "It's not gonna get better unless you rip off the bandaid and start dealing."

"...What if it doesn't?"

"Won't know until you try."

"I guess…"

"We'll talk about it later. C'mon, I'll get you some water and Advil. Go put on some clean clothes."

Lexa sniffs, nods. There's a flutter of levity in her heart, like a flutter of moth's wings against her skin, a little buoyancy to balance out the dread caked on her ribs like wet concrete.

"You'll be okay, Lexa." Anya's fingers linger on Lexa's shoulder, and her next words are a bit surprising, a bit thick, a bit out of character. "I won't let anything happen to you."

Lexa swallows, but she feels sick again. "...I said something like that once."

Anya's expression breaks open in a rare moment of raw vulnerability and she looks so truly distraught that Lexa can't handle it. She struggles to her feet and staggers over to her dresser to find clean clothes. .

Behind her, Anya runs her fingers through her hair.

Lexa supposes that even the toughest warriors get scared sometimes.

/ / /

 _Present Day…_

She remembers at the oddest times that Clarke is left handed.

Now for instance.

It's not like she's doing something extraordinary, something that would draw attention to that sort of thing. No. She's just holding her left arm across her torso, gripping her right bicep with strong, slender fingers, and… it's enough. Remembering where those fingers have been, what those fingers have done, Lexa is breathless as soon as she opens the door.

And Clarke is so beautiful.

Clarke is so _beautiful_.

Clarke is so, _so beautiful_.

It's so overwhelming that it fills Lexa to the brim and spills over. She wants to stand up tall and scream about it. She wants to climb Mt. Hood and yell until she's hoarse. She doesn't care if anyone listens. The universe has a right to know. She has a right to say it.

She never thought she'd get another chance at this.

But seeing Clarke again is like coming home to find that the door has been kicked in and the windows have been smashed out. Lexa's first impulse is to reach out and touch, to take her hands and pick up the pieces, to fix what she can, whatever will restore her home back to the way it was. Instead, she stands with her feet rooted to the floor, quiet and nervous, taking stock of the damage she's done to the girl she claims to love.

"Hey," Clarke murmurs, and steps inside, brushing past Lexa's arm, leaving Lexa with a racing heart and a faint buzzing in her ears.

The doorknob slides from Lexa's fingertips, the door clicks shut, and then the only sound in the apartment is the water running in the bathroom.

Clarke looks as tired as Lexa feels, bundled up and bedraggled. Her hair is down, but her face is clean. She's thrown a long coat on over her leggings and water-stained Uggs, either a low effort 7 AM outfit or actual pajamas. It's hard to tell, but Lexa doesn't care, because Clarke is lovely in everything she wears, and Lexa is actually shaking from the effort it takes not to collapse at Clarke's feet.

Clarke's blue eyes are fleeting, catching Lexa's gaze and flicking away again every couple seconds. Her hands twitch in her pockets, and her shoulders strain forward, but she can't seem to bring herself closer. Instead she peers around at Anya's furniture and nods to herself like she's in the middle of some silent conversation, discussing things Lexa can't hear.

The bathroom door opens suddenly, and they both jump like they've just been caught stealing. Anya steps out and glances between them suspiciously.

"Hi, Clarke."

Clarke nods stiffly. "Hi."

"Nice to finally meet you."

"Yeah." Clarke's voice is hoarse, and she clears it thickly. "Same."

Anya narrows her eyes at Lexa and then turns to grab her coat off the floor. "Wish I could stay and chat, but I'm late." She waves an admonishing finger between them. "No fucking on my bed."

Lexa glares, but Clarke actually looks embarrassed. "We won't," she says quickly, too quickly. "We're actually about to leave."

Lexa's gaze snaps to hers. "Where are we going?"

"Anyway," Anya cuts in, before they can take it further, "I'm going first."

She excuses herself quickly, muttering something hushed and private in Clarke's ear as she passes before striding out the door.

The silence, as her feet pound away down the hall, is stifling.

Clarke unzips her coat, lets it fall open. She's wearing an old, powder blue UCLA shirt underneath that Lexa wants to run her fingers over. Clarke's hands ball up into fists at her sides and her head falls back a little. She stares up at the ceiling with a clenched jaw.

"I wasn't expecting to fall in love with you so fast," she says, swallowing, and Lexa's eyes follow the movement. "Things have gotten really complicated, and now I'm worried that they won't work out because of it." She drops her chin and glances off to the side, low and away. "Maybe I should have taken it slow. Maybe I… Maybe I pushed you too hard too fast."

"You didn't," Lexa says, and fuck if she doesn't sound pathetically desperate. "You didn't do anything wrong. You've been wonderful, actually."

Clarke scoffs. "I've been abusive."

"No, you haven't." Lexa takes a step forward. "You've been angry because I'm keeping secrets."

"But…" Clarke's eyes shimmer with tears. "But, I've never hit anyone before… I mean, what kind of asshole hits people? You're my girlfriend. I-" she wipes her eyes. "I don't know who I am anymore."

"You're Clarke Griffin." Lexa takes another step, and another, until they're just inches away from each other. "And you're an amazing girlfriend. I couldn't ask for better."

Clarke chokes out a laugh. "God, Lexa… please, just let me feel guilty about this."

"I feel guilty enough for both of us, I promise."

Clarke glances up and smiles, weak and watery. How she can still look so strong like this Lexa will never know. She's such a pillar. She's such a beacon, surefooted and loyal. Clarke always takes the lead, Lexa realizes. Clarke has taken every risk without blinking, every fall without flinching.

It's high time Lexa returned the favor.

"I want you," Lexa says, taking Clarke's hand, lacing their fingers together. "I don't care that you're not perfect. I don't want you to be. I just want you to put up with my shit and make fun of me for having terrible nutrition and force me to take showers when I forget. I know you feel bad, but it was just a mistake. It doesn't make you a bad person, Clarke." Lexa smiles, earnestly, desperately. "You're such an amazingly _good_ person. I don't know what I ever did to deserve you."

Clarke's smile is weak, but resilient. "Look in the mirror sometime, will you?"

Lexa pulls her in for a hard kiss, and Clarke is ready for her, arms rising to wrap around her shoulders, to lock her in close.

"I missed you."

"God, I missed you, too."

Lexa holds Clarke's face in her hands, tips their foreheads together. "You look exhausted."

"So do you."

"Have you slept?"

"Not much." Clarke surges forward to capture Lexa's mouth again, licks her lips when she leans away. "Wanna get outta here?"

"Is that a proposition?"

"I wanna spoon," Clarke says, and then laughs brightly. "Jesus, I'm 12 years old."

"No, that sounds amazing."

"My place?"

"Please. Mine's a disaster."

Clarke kisses her one last time. "Get your stuff and let's go."

Lexa is sure she's never packed so quickly in her life.

* * *

 _A/N: Thanks for reading! Don't forget to leave a review and tell me what you think :D_


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